


Under Your Skin

by Greyrey-lo (Punkpoemprose)



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Creatures & Monsters, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Bendemption, College Student Rey (Star Wars), Eventual Happy Ending, F/M, Minor Finn/Rose Tico, Past Abuse, Past Child Abuse, Selkies, selkie kylo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-01
Updated: 2019-10-01
Packaged: 2020-10-26 11:16:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 32,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20741318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Punkpoemprose/pseuds/Greyrey-lo
Summary: Rey has fought long and hard to make something of herself, to beat the odds. With a loving group of friends, a little apartment to call her own, and just over a month to go before she receives her Master's degree, she feels as though she may have done it.Kylo is perfectly happy to be alone. For him, it's better to be alone than to follow in the footsteps of those who have come before him, a path that leads only to misery.Fate, as always, has it's own ideas.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I'm so thrilled to be posting my second RFFA fic to share with you all! It's been many months, a lot of drafting and rewriting in the making and I'm so grateful to the RFFA mods for all their help in the process!

Everything smelled like mud and algae. Some people didn’t care for the smell of the lake; they said it smelled of fish or decomposition or whatever other unpleasantness they caught on the breeze that justified their nose turning up. Rey knew better. She’d smelled the way that tears and snot and saliva stained a place, in a way that wouldn’t wash out of clothes or bedding that were fourth- or fifth-hand. The lake was fresh to her nose, nothing like the way trash and animal excrement stunk up city streets, nothing like the hot alcohol breath of another foster father asking her to come a little closer.

The lake called to her, sung her a song of crashing waves and the rushing and flowing of water. Sometimes the gulls called to her too, but it was getting too dark for that. Another famous, glowing sunset was leaving its last dregs of light on the watery horizon, bidding her goodnight, insisting that she return home.

She didn’t move for a long while. She had class in the morning and she wasn't ready to return to her empty apartment, a half hour walk from the beach. The rock she sat atop was nearly overrun by the tide by the time she thought to get up, and all around her was water.

She’d watched the tide come in from her perch there. It was the only one with no trace of algae, and while the waves wouldn’t touch her while she sat upon it, she’d still have to soak herself up to the knee or higher to make her way back to the beach.

She hadn’t brought her phone, not wanting to be bothered, and so she had nothing to lose but soaked jeans and shoes. It was a miserable thought, to walk back home in wet pants. Her sandals would dry enough as she walked, but it was too cool and too humid for fabric to do the same. She could hardly spend the night sleeping on a rock, although it certainly wasn’t the worst place she’d ever slept. She was not a stranger to discomfort.

Rey slid down the rock. The water came up to her midthigh, and it chilled her to the bone. The ice had only recently melted off. It was the first real sixty-degree day of the season and she’d been too willing to embrace it. The air was cooler now, and just as she thought miserably about how she might lose a toe on the walk back, she slipped on a wet stone below her foot and fell fully backwards into the water.

The water wrapped around her body like the air had moments before and it was pure instinct that kept her from breathing in. For all her love of the water, she raged against its embrace, unsure of how to escape, pulled along by the current until her knee connected with a stone and some half-mad ancient instinct caused her to stand.

She tumbled ashore, feet down the beach from where she had been, entirely soaked from head to toe. She choked and sputtered and she breathed, scrambling on hands and knees until, nestled between the rocks she chanced upon something soft and warm. It felt like fur and she thought to jerk her hand back and run away from the water.

Yet her hand remained gripped around the warmth. What first had felt like short velvety fur under her fingers revealed itself to be a leather jacket.

It made no sense to her. She hadn’t seen another soul in hours, but cold and wet she took the garment from its place in the rocks and traveled ashore with it. Once she’d scrambled up the hill, she gave it a bit more attention. Soft, well worn leather and clearly made for someone far taller and broader than her.

She slid it on anyway. It was dry and impossibly warm given how it had been between the rocks and how much time had passed since the sun had set. She tried not to think much of it or whether it made her a thief to take it.

It didn’t matter. Some part of her brain, not the most logical part but the instinctual sense in her, told her that it was hers, that she was meant to keep it. As large as it was, it was comfortable, and it kept the wind off her torso as she made her way back to her apartment. It had been a lucky find. She’d made many in her life, but this felt like something more than lucky. She was uncertain, but as she made it to her building with toes not quite frost bitten, but still cold, she appreciated it for what it was. Things could have been much, much worse.

She took her time climbing the stairs to the third floor, giving her body time to warm up organically so that her toes wouldn’t sting when she subjected them to a hot shower once she made it inside her place. It had been her plan from the beginning, but once she opened the door, she felt the need to take care of her newfound treasure before herself.

It made no sense to carefully tuck it away in the vintage steamer trunk at the foot of her bed. It made even less sense to lock it inside, but she did. It was strange, she thought, the compulsion she had to hide it away, to keep it safe. It didn’t even belong to her, unless possession was indeed nine-tenths of the law, but she explained it away to herself. She’d always felt a need to keep her “treasures” safe, a side effect of growing up in the system. She told herself that she would return to the beach the next morning to return it to its true owner, and a night in her trunk wouldn’t do it any harm.

It was a convenient lie, an easy explanation compared to the strange feeling in her gut that told her she would do no such thing. She ignored the strange sensation and treated her still chilled body to a hot shower.

* * *

He’d watched her on the rock. He didn’t normally watch. He simply came ashore, went about his business and returned, but he’d watched her. She was pretty, but that wasn’t what had caught his attention. He’d seen plenty of pretty girls in his time, and none of them looked at the lake in the same way she did. It was the strange peace and longing about her as she let the tide roll in around her that caught his attention.

He’d almost mistaken her for being like him. She felt like a kindred spirit in a way he couldn’t explain, and so he watched her. He even thought for a moment about approaching her, but by the time the thought became actionable, she was moving, and he decided to step further back into the shadows of the old maple trees that stood tall and proud on the hill.

Several feet and a rocky slope separated them when he saw the water take her. He didn’t move to help her. It made little sense to bother. He might be able to reach her in time to help, but he’d never cared to help anyone before and despite the odd sense of companionship he’d found in the short time he spent watching, he wasn’t about to start now. He liked to think that he was best off that way. Helping meant communicating. Communicating lead to complications. He hated complications and she would be fine without him.

When a beat passed and she didn’t stand up, he started to move. The water couldn’t have been much higher than her hips, a slip should have meant wet hair but little else of concern. She may have hit her head on a stone, he realized with something uncomfortably like genuine concern. He didn’t consider himself the sort to care, but he knew that if he let her die in the water that it would cause more complications for him than talking to her would. When people die, more people have a habit of showing up to the site. They search, they investigate, they cry. He’d seen it all before. He wouldn’t have peace and despite the occasional presence of college students, he did happen to like the stretch of beach enough to want to prevent such a mishap.

He justified his movement from the shade in this way, ignoring the part of him that had been begging to help her from the first moment she fell, the part of him that still felt connected, the part of him that noticed her beauty and the way she seemed to long for the water all around her.

When he saw her emerge, scrambling onto the rocky beach feet away from her original location, he shifted back into the shadows and released a breath he hadn’t noticed he’d been holding.

Then he felt it.

A pull, soft at first, but then solid, like a large hand was gripping his chest and pulling. It hurt for a moment, like ripping off a band aid did, and it was followed by a dull ache in his head which faded rather quickly and left him, finally, with a strange almost-there-sensation, something like a tickle in the back of his throat, but lower.

He’d never felt anything like it before. Despite this, however, he knew immediately what it meant. He hadn’t needed to see it happen to know, but he saw her anyway. She’d emerged onto the beach, and she’d done it.

She’d taken his skin.

He watched her for a moment more and then slunk back into the woods to ensure that he wouldn’t be discovered by her. When she ran up the hill, well out of earshot, he punched the tree closest to him and growled. He knew that he should follow her, start explaining, start making plans and figure out how to follow eons of tradition, but he didn’t. He kept hitting the wood until his knuckles were bloodied and his knees buckled under him.

He’d never wanted this. He’d done everything to avoid it, but it had happened anyway. Fate was a cruel force.


	2. Chapter 2

Classes had been hellish. It was always like that once things thawed off. There would be exactly one day of professors excitedly bringing everyone outside on the first sixty degree day of the year, and then hell to pay the next day to make up for it. It was even worse when it was supposed to get cold again right after, but Rey had lucked out; the weather was only supposed to get warmer from there on out. It was a gift.

Upstate New York was unlike anywhere she’d ever been before. England had always been rainy and a bit cool at times, but she’d never known the freezing cold or burning heat until she’d made her way to the States on a scholarship. She’d done her undergrad in Arizona. It had been hot enough to reduce her shoes' bottoms to melted plastic on the hottest days. She’d wanted to fry an egg on the sidewalk once, just because she’d taken the temperature and was sure that it would cook, but she couldn’t bring herself to waste the egg to do it.

It was there that she’d met Finn. She’d majored in Ecology while he’d done his undergraduate work in Civil Engineering. It had been pure happenstance that they’d run into each other in freshman physics and complained about the heat together. He’d liked her accent, and she’d liked his. He was a New Yorker, born downstate and bounced around within its borders, but undeniably a New Yorker. They both sounded different from the born and bred Arizonians that they shared classes with and that was enough to start a spark.

After four years of mutual agony in the science building together, the trial by almost literal fire that had happened the day that the air-conditioning went out in the dorms, and many quiet nights with cheap beer having discussions that revealed their upbringings were shockingly similar, they became best friends. It was him that had talked her into doing grad school with him on the opposite coast, not far from where he’d spent his only good years in foster care with an old woman named Maz.

He was a good man and an excellent friend. It had almost made her sad to see him falling in love with Rose, but she’d made friends with the young woman, bonding with her over a love of fixing broken things. It was the fact that they were going to settle in the area that had her looking at staying in the frozen North after her graduation in the spring. That, and the lake.

England was surrounded by water, but the only time she’d ever seen its shores was when she was flying above them, heading far away and never to return. Before that, all she’d ever seen were city streets. She’d never seen so much green and blue in her entire life until she found her way to New York. She knew that there were plenty of lakes, even several other “great” ones that she’d heard were quite lovely, but she couldn’t imagine any shore better than the one that had been her home for the past two years.

She wore the jacket down to the beach. She wasn’t sure what caused her to do so, but she knew that it was something that she needed to do if she was going to take it out of the trunk at all. It still felt warm under her fingers, and she told herself that the light from the window had heated up the trunk, even though nothing else she’d touched within it felt even remotely warm.

The gulls were making their usual racket as she walked past the campus’s health center and towards the tall maples that marked the edge of where civilization met the water. She wasn’t particularly fond of the birds after they descended upon her during her first semester and made quick work of her lunch. She would have gladly shared a fry or two, but she wasn’t fond of gluttons; at least she wasn’t fond of gluttons without cause, and they were quite fat. The only ones worse were the geese. She could say, with the fair level of certainty that was afforded to her by holding a bachelor’s degree and - almost - a master’s degree in biology, that they were Satan’s creatures.

When she found her way down the slope she treated as her own personal staircase to the lake, she found it harder to hear their squawking, which was, at the very least, odd. The roar of the waves crashing ashore covered all else. The smell of the lake hit her like a force when she made her way to the large rock that stood as her lounge. She breathed it in. She could almost forget that she had a month’s worth of work to do within the week once she was somewhat comfortably seated on its top.

She looked down the shore and saw no one aside from distant vague dark shapes. No one was on the beach searching for her jacket at least.

She shook her head at the thought. It wasn’t hers. At least it wasn’t hers yet, even though it felt warm and right against her skin and she didn’t feel like she would be willing to return it without a fist fight. It wasn’t hers, and it had an owner, someone who had left it amongst the rocks. She thought maybe they wouldn’t come back to look for it; after all, no one had ever come back to look for her and she imagined she had a bit more value than a jacket. At least she had to tell herself that she did.

Seeing no one, she reclined on the rock and closed her eyes, letting the sound of the lake and the warmth of the sun lull her into a sense of comfort that only it could.

* * *

She was lying on the rock again. He had seen her come. He’d spent the night amongst the trees, listening to the water he couldn’t return to and doing his very best to try to hate her for the situation that she’d put them both in.

It was impossible for him to hate her though. From a logical standpoint, he was perfectly aware of the fact that she hadn’t meant to damn them both. If she had known what she had started when she picked up his skin, she would have given it a wide berth. The problem, he decided, was that no one told the old tales anymore. No one was afraid to walk alone in nature since the advent of cell phones and decent reception made for a quick call should they run up against trouble, and no one thought to be afraid of the unexplained because they were busy explaining all of it.

He cringed, sighed, and managed to put his abused hands into his pockets. He was beginning to sound like his father and it was the last thing he wanted.

Logically he couldn’t hate her, and illogically, innately, instinctively he couldn’t even entertain the thought for very long. He couldn’t even be displeased with her, only the situation. She’d only done what she was destined to do, and now he was watching her, not knowing her name except the one that the situation gave her.

The woman, the brunette wearing his seal skin, had no name to him except “mate”.

He groaned. This is not how he’d wanted it to happen. He’d never wanted it to happen. He was perfectly content to keeping to the waves and occasionally coming ashore when he really needed to, like when old habits caused him to crave a burger like they had last night, which in retrospect, had not been worth the situation he was currently in. Other times he came ashore to manage assets, which would logically have been a more worthwhile reason to wind up so phenomenally screwed. Better to say that money drew you to ruin than it was to admit that it was McDonalds.

He wondered if she would laugh if he told her that. He wondered what she sounded like when she laughed. 

She shifted on the rock and he thought that she might be getting up, but she was only adjusting the bottom edge of her shirt where it had ridden up. He knew that he should go and talk to her, to begin the madness that would be attempting to explain it all to her.

He slid back against the trees, itching to dive into the water he couldn’t truly return to. He was phenomenally fucked.

* * *

Rey felt him coming before she saw him. It was hard to explain how, but the best she could manage was that her heart gave a little tug and told her to look up in the direction of the maples from which she’d come.

It had gotten dark again, and her stomach growled slightly. She had never forgotten about a meal in her entire life. She’d missed a great many, if only because no one ever really checked to see how much of a foster parent’s paycheck actually went to feeding the child in their care. College had left her surprisingly well fed, if only because by some miracle her scholarships covered her board expenses and the university’s dining hall had the “all you can eat” plan of her dreams. These days she only ever missed a meal when she was well and truly distracted like she was by the lake.

He was barely recognizable as a man as he walked down the slope and toward her, and despite the fact that she’d had enough campus safety lessons to know that being a woman alone in the dark with an unknown stranger wasn’t ideal, she didn’t feel frightened by his approach. In fact, she felt something strangely opposite of fear, and that was what scared her.

“Hello?” she ventured, deciding that rapists or murderers probably wouldn’t give her an incredibly friendly ‘oh hi there’ in response.

There came no sound in return, and that was when she decided to feel afraid, even though something in her was fighting against the reaction. Her heart was thundering, and she knew it wasn’t with fear. It made her feel ill.

She hadn’t noticed that the sun was already so low in the sky. The tide was rolling in and he was edging closer and closer down the hill. She pushed off the rock and stepped down and into the water that was blessedly only up to her ankles. She was wearing her sandals, and while she was worried about slipping again, she imagined she could head back up the hill faster than he could. She was quick, agile, and able to slip away from men much larger than her, a skill she’d learned in the most unfortunate way possible as a child.

He was much, much bigger than she was. She realized that when he stopped his approach, just at the water’s edge, staring at her as she scrambled from her rock. She couldn’t see his features well, but what was incredibly evident was that he was quite a bit taller than her, and that he was immensely broad.

“You’re wearing my…”

He didn’t finish the phrase, and it sounded to her like he wasn’t sure what to say. His voice was deep. A chill went through her that could be explained by the cool water pooling around her ankles but was certainly due to his presence.

She knew, logically that she should take the jacket off and hand it to him and then run for the dorms, but she couldn’t. She couldn’t take it off and she couldn’t move.

“Yes,” she managed to say after a moment, proud of her voice’s stability despite the fact that she was terrified and transfixed all at once.

* * *

She was afraid of him. Normally it would bring him a fair amount of enjoyment to be feared by someone. He’d lived his whole life trying to be someone that could be feared, someone who lived up to the tales of monsters that he’d heard as a child, but apparently escaped the notice of girls like her.

It brought him no joy.

He tried to slouch a bit, but he imagined that making himself seem smaller had no real impact on her comfort level, especially when a furious part of him that was being kept under lock and key in the back of his head wanted nothing more than to tear his skin from her shoulders. He wouldn’t though. In fact, he couldn’t. The ancient laws that bound his curse - now their curse - dictated that he couldn’t hurt her. He didn’t want to hurt her.

“You can’t give it back?” he asked, already knowing that it was the truth, but being unable not to ask the question. It would be so much easier if she could just shuck it off into the water and leave him be. It would be better for both of them.

She was eyeing him suspiciously, the water lapping against her lower calf. They’d need to move soon, the tide was rolling in. He suddenly regretted that he had no place on shore to take her to. Many of his kind kept dwellings on land, close to the water so that they could come and go as they wished, but he never liked to be out of the lake much, and so he’d never bothered. He needed to take her somewhere now though, to explain.

“No,” she said, and while it was very much the truth and very much a statement, it sounded like a question. She was scared. He’d half expected it, but he didn’t know how to stop it.

“You don’t even know what it is, do you?” he asked, and he was astounded to hear the edge to his own tone. He wasn’t angry with her; he was frustrated, and it was coming through in his words.

“No.”

He shook his head, and gestured to the water, “Why did you take it?”

She grimaced and he made the realization that he’d said too much and not enough and that he had done even more to frighten her because she was dashing off, and he couldn’t catch her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, the idea to put Rey in a leather jacket for a fic has been something I've planned to do since Daisy Ridley did that Vogue interview in 2017 .  
For those who like visuals:  
[The lake](https://www.shutterbug.com/images/styles/960-wide/public/photo_post/102292/Lake%20Ontario00015%20copy.jpg)  
[Rey's trunk](https://a.1stdibscdn.com/archivesE/upload/1121189/f_133379421547707648282/13337942_master.jpg?width=768)


	3. Chapter 3

Rey couldn’t stop shaking.

She was in her apartment, safe and sound, but she couldn’t stop shaking. She’d put the jacket, if that’s even what it was, back into her trunk and she’d locked it even though what she really wanted to do, more than anything, was throw it away.

Back on the beach everything in her head had been screaming danger, but she had been frozen in place, and something in her, something instinctual, was overpowering her fight or flight response, telling her that she needed to be calm. It was only her instinct for survival, the memory of years of beatings and almost assaults and the fear of pain, that had made her move.

Whoever that man had been, whatever he had been, she was afraid to know, and yet he’d felt oddly familiar to her. Like she was supposed to know him, or she was supposed to get to know him. All she was certain of was that he was terrifying and yet it was all she could do to keep herself from marching back down to the beach to see him again.

He’d asked her for his jacket, and yet he hadn’t called it that. He’d even implied, to which she’d answered affirmatively, that she didn’t know what it even was. Of course she had known that it was a jacket, at least objectively it was, but she’d never had a jacket that she couldn’t give to someone else, one that she needed to lock away unless she was wearing it for fear that someone else might so much as touch it.

That it should happen on a lake felt oddly familiar.

Once upon a time, one of the few times she’d been enrolled in school and not taught from home, she’d managed to come into a book of her own. It was a ratty thing that a teacher had given her as a kindness when she’d said she’d had nothing to read at home. It was a book of folk tales, Irish, she thought. It was something the teacher had picked up at a Booksale and in the back it had been stamped in red ink “Discarded From Kensington Central Library”. No one was willing to ever give her anything other than discards after all.

The book had held a story however, one that she couldn’t quite recall. She wished beyond all things that she still had the dogeared yellow and red thing, but even as protective of her belongings as she was, every now and then someone would take her trash bag full of worldly possessions as she passed from home to home and would simply toss it out without rhyme or reason for it. It had been a casualty of one such occasion.

It was something to focus on that wasn’t gut wrenching terror, and so she slowly but surely undressed from her daywear of shorts and a t-shirt and changed into leggings and a hoodie. She tugged on her boots and tossed her phone into the pocket at her front, deciding to keep her thumb hovered over Finn’s number as she walked over to the library. She didn’t want to scare him with what had happened at the lake - especially not when she knew he would worry beyond what was even necessary - but she did know that should anything happen, he was a safer call than campus police. She knew for a fact his response time would be twice as fast, with Rose in tow, and she was arguably more formidable than the entire department.

* * *

He’d thought about chasing after her when she left the shore but thought better of it. He still wasn’t even wearing shoes. There was a place in the woods where he kept everything he had to his name on shore beyond his accounts and the lost remnants of his distant childhood. He’d known from a young age that he didn’t want much of anything to do with life on land, other than that his parents had wanted it for him and that for a short time he had wanted to please them. He’d always been smart, if nothing else, and he’d made some wise investments with the money they’d wanted him to use to prepare himself for what his father called “inevitable”.

For what it was worth, the old man had been right after all. Despite the fact that he’d done his best to avoid it, he’d ended up ashore and at least somewhat grateful for the fact that he had some preparations made.

He made his way through the woods and toward the moderately inconspicuous outcropping of rocks that held at its center a fairly large waterproof lockbox in which he kept some clothes, two pairs of shoes, a wallet, a watch, and a cellphone that was both woefully out of date and more than likely very dead. It had been his mother’s idea; he never used it and the only number in it was hers. He grabbed it anyway and quickly dressed himself in dark trousers and a black shirt, tossing his wallet into his pants pocket before he went. He wished he had thought to change sooner, to grab his things and invite her to dinner. Things would have gone better if he had been able to tell her after she was a bit more comfortable.

He had to remind himself that he hadn’t even really “told” her yet at any rate. He’d simply been himself and terrified her in the process. Somewhere his father was laughing at him, he could feel it. He probably deserved it, he had to admit, and for the first time in a very long time, maybe for the first time ever, he wished that he could reach out and ask for some fatherly advice. He might have his father’s looks, but he didn’t have even half his charm. He was too much like his mother’s father. That’s what everyone had said.

He’d been a murderer, too.

* * *

Rey had managed, mostly through pure luck and the help of a rather ingenious librarian, to hunt down exactly what she was looking for. Or, at least, almost exactly.

What she had described to the woman at the research desk had been “a yellowish offwhite book with big red and green letters and some fancy scrollwork on the cover that has Irish mythology in it”, and what they had found was  _ Irish Folktales  _ collected and edited by Henry Glassie. Because librarians were masters of research, but not miracle workers, and the library unfortunately did not have a copy of the 1985 copy she’d been given, they instead managed to hunt down a epub copy of the 1993 edition from an online database.

She was quite happily, albeit a tad nervously, clicking through page after page of the pdf on one of the library’s computers. She could have walked back off campus to her apartment and done this from the comfort of her couch, but her laptop was a disagreeable old thing that only worked correctly when it wanted to. Besides that, she was also getting some small measure of comfort from the fact that she was not alone but was surrounded by people. She also knew that the closest dining hall to the library would be serving “late night” meals for another hour or so, and she was hoping that once she managed to find what she was looking for, she might be able to calm her nerves and eat something.

She had a feeling she’d eat either way. When she was hungry enough, there was very little that could stop her from eating. She had food in her apartment, and greasy dining hall mac and cheese wouldn’t fix all her problems, but it would certainly help.

The screen scrolled a bit further as she tapped her finger on the down arrow and she let out a sigh. She hadn’t known what she was looking for, but she’d found it. It was staring at her plain as day from the screen and she could recall a much younger version of herself reading it before bed, because the only one who had ever read her a bedtime story was herself.

“Tom Moore and the Seal Woman” began:

_ In the village of Kilshanig, two miles north-east of Castlegregory, there lived at one time a fine, brave young man named Tom Moore, a good dancer and singer. 'Tis often he was heard singing among the cliffs and in the fields of a night. Tom's father and mother died and he was alone in the house and in need of a wife _ .

Rey continued to read on, coming to the point where Tom found a frighteningly beautiful woman sitting atop a rock on the shoreline who left before he could ask her to marry him. He believed that God himself had sent her to him, and when he saw her again, he sprung into action.

_ Tom took the hood from her head and said, "I'll have this!" _

_ “The moment he did that she cried: ‘Give back my hood, Tom Moore!’  _

_ ‘Indeed I will not, for 'twas God sent you to me, and now that you have speech I'm well satisfied! And taking her by the arm he led her to the house. The woman cooked breakfast, and they sat down together to eat it.’” _

The tale continued on, Tom made a wife of the woman. She gave him five children and one day she came upon her hood where he’d hidden it and rather promptly thereafter left him for the sea where she swam off with her brother, both in the form of seals. It was discovered the next morning that their children all had webbed fingers and toes.

The tale proclaimed, at its end that the descendants of Tom Moore and his Seal Woman still reside in Kilshanig and that they still have webbed fingers and toes, though they lessen with each generation.

The logical part of Rey’s mind, the one that liked explanations that made sense had been studying biology for the past six years or more of her life, told her that it was just a tale to explain a population of people with syndactyly who lived in the region at the time. It was a genetic birth defect that meant one’s fingers and or toes were webbed at birth because apoptosis hadn’t occurred in the webbing’s cells at the right time during gestation.

The part of her that knew better typed “seal woman” into google. The top result, past the ads and youtube videos, was the Wikipedia article for “Selkie”. She clicked it with the feeling that she was horrifyingly on the right track. There were legends and folklore contained in the article from multiple different countries, all a bit different, but generally singing the same tune as the tale she’d just reread from her childhood book. Selkies were women who were seals sometimes and women others, and they were good wives, so long as one kept their skin hidden, holding them hostage so they couldn’t return to the sea.

A quick search of the article only found one tale that seemed particularly helpful to her, however. Scottish selkie folklore indicated that male selkies were very handsome in their human form and had great seductive powers over human women. Rey flushed and read on. Apparently women might summon a selkie lover by crying seven tears into the sea, something she was fairly certain she’d never done, and that like the other stories, a human might hold a selkie’s skin hostage to keep their seal-husband from straying.

She wasn’t particularly worried about the dark man from the shore straying. In fact, she was more concerned as to why she had been unable to simply hand him his jacket when he’d asked her for it. If it was his skin, and she had no interest in keeping him as her husband, it should have been easy enough for her to hand it back, but she had been unable to. Nothing in the Wikipedia article said anything about the compulsion she’d felt to keep the thing.

With a sigh, she closed the browser and logged off from the computer. She only had a good ten or more minutes to leave if she was going to make herself sick on dining hall mac and cheese, and she didn’t want to see another word about selkies. She felt silly for looking it up in the first place. She’d found a jacket on the shore, she’d liked the jacket and wanted to keep it, and the owner of the jacket had scared her so badly she’d run off with it. There was nothing more to it.

* * *

He’d followed her. Or rather, he’d followed the feeling of her to just outside a large brick building. It was the library; he knew because he’d spent some time there before. There was a room on the third floor of the building where an old record machine and some ancient headphones had been moved, along with a milkcrate full of records, to a pair of overstuffed lounge chairs beside a large window overlooking the lake. He liked, sometimes, when he felt like being on shore and around even a few people, to go there and listen to music and maybe read a book. He still looked young enough to belong on the campus, and he’d never been asked whether he belonged or not, so he’d enjoyed using the space.

She was inside, but he wouldn’t enter. He didn’t want to frighten her again, especially not around so many people, not if he could help it. Instead he nervously tucked his hair behind his ear and leaned against a tree that grew in the quad opposite the doors. Maybe she’d be less frightened if she saw him there instead of standing by the corner where she’d probably be surprised by his presence.

None of this was easy, he decided.

When she walked out the front doors, she didn’t look towards him. She was focused on her phone, typing out a text before she looked up suddenly, a bit frightened, and then stared straight at him.

She wasn’t wearing his skin, and yet he still felt drawn to her. She might not be wearing it, but she still possessed it, and with it him. He wondered if she’d hidden it yet. They always hid them, even if they didn’t want to. It was part of the curse, or the spell, whatever one preferred to call it.

“Hello?” he asked, this time it was his turn to be anxious. He half expected her to run, and he half expected her to scream, so when she walked towards him, he wasn’t sure whether he should feel incredibly relieved or incredibly fearful. She looked like the type of woman who could kill a man. He would hardly blame her if she did. In fact, at this point, he just might thank her.

“Am I going crazy?”

He hadn’t expected that to be the first thing she said upon seeing him, but he supposed that every reaction she was having was a valid one. After all, she was confused, frightened, and likely feeling a bit stalked at the moment. Regardless of how it hit him, he was struck by two realizations at once: the first was that it was the first full sentence she’d spoken to him, and the second that it had somehow escaped his notice before that she had a quite beautiful and clear voice with a British accent. That, he thought, was curious.

He did his best to make himself small and less imposing.

“No, I don’t think you are,” he said gently, or at least in what he thought was a gentle way of speaking. It only seemed to upset her more, however.

“Do you have to say that because of… because of this thing?” she asked, though she sounded exasperated and a bit angry. He couldn’t blame her.

“What do you think this thing is exactly?”

He was genuinely curious to know the answer. She seemed less frightened of him now, and he had a feeling that that meant she had a theory.

“You’re going to make me say it like I’m a crazy person then? Fine, at least I’m not a stalker, so what if I sound crazy. The selkie thing.”

She was smart.

* * *

He seemed baffled for a moment, and she almost let herself feel embarrassed for being wrong, but she knew that she wasn’t. She’d known, somehow, since she picked up his jacket, his skin, that she was being drawn into something. It was something beyond her control, something that was old and ancient and that she had a feeling he couldn’t change either. He wasn’t human, or at least he wasn’t fully human, and that was something she’d known since meeting him earlier by the water.

His skin had felt so warm and soft against her skin. She should have known that it was impossible for leather to feel that way, so comfortable, and almost alive in a way that made wearing it feel like a constant embrace. She wondered now, not wearing it at all, why she was beginning to feel a similar sensation in his presence.

Her skin was hot and she wanted to reach out and touch him despite the fact that it made her feel like a lunatic to even think about it. He nodded slowly and took a hand she hadn’t truly been cognizant of reaching out with to begin with. It felt warm and soft in hers. He didn’t have the callouses that she did, and she let him lace his fingers through hers because it felt right.

“What’s your name?” she asked, her voice low, almost a whisper.

He stared at her for a moment, almost like he hadn’t expected her to ask.

“Kylo.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The excerpt of "Tom Moore and the Seal Woman" comes from pages 182-184 of _Irish Folk Tales_ Edited by Henry Glassie. This book, along with several other books in The Pantheon Fairy Tale and Folklore Library are my go to for traditional lore of the Irish, Norse, and Greater European variety. It was of course, the inspiration for this whole piece. I highly recommend you pick up a copy or borrow it from your local public library.  
Glassie, Henry H., ed. _Irish Folk Tales_. Pantheon, 1985. (I'm a librarian first and a fangirl second.)


	4. Chapter 4

They’d missed dinner. Or rather she’d missed dinner, as she had no intentions of taking him to dinner in the first place. She’d also had no intentions of taking him home with her, but when she found herself at his side in the ancient elevator up to her floor, it felt right.

He was so much larger than her, and the part of her brain that once again tried to persuade her away from insanity, said something about stranger danger immediately followed by “he’s so big he could literally snap you in half without much effort.” The other part of her, the part influenced by whatever magical seduction abilities he was holding over her, the part of her she was already secretly calling her “selkie sense”, told her that he’d rather die than hurt her. She trusted it, because if he hadn’t tried to hurt her at the lake, where it would have been easiest, he wasn’t going to try to hurt her at all.

She fumbled a bit with her keys and unlocked the door, letting him into her immensely messy and more than likely disappointing apartment. She could imagine the fit that Finn would have if he knew that she was letting him into her place, the speech she’d get about how he thought her self-preservation instincts were better than that. Truly they were. They were much better than to let a stranger into her home, but despite not knowing anything about the man before her but his name and what he was, or at least what she thought he was, she felt like she knew him.

If she wound up murdered, it would serve her right.

She shucked off her boots by the door, closed it behind them, and headed towards the small kitchenette, with intentions of eating whatever she found first in her fridge. There was little inside; she ate almost exclusively at the dining hall and no one had ever taken the time to teach her how to cook so she was fairly limited to anything that could be boiled, tossed in a microwave, or ordered out.

She grabbed the takeout box of lo mein she’d had for dinner the night before and grabbed a fork from the drawer, not bothering to heat it up. She was too hungry, and she didn’t really care that he was staring at her when she opened the container, twirled her fork in its contents and shoved a mess of noodles into her mouth. She leaned against the counter, leaving him standing in her entryway before her, looking a bit awkward.

“This is your home then?” he asked.

It was the first thing he’d said to her since his name. They hadn’t really discussed that she was taking him back to her apartment, at least not out loud, but she’d felt that they had a mutual understanding that if they were going to talk they needed to be someplace private. Since she wasn’t really feeling like another cold dip in the lake she decided that it wasn’t really a proper “your place or mine” situation.

“As much of one as I’ve ever had,” she said. There was still food in her mouth as she spoke, but she’d never really been one for manners. Manners didn’t do you much good when no one bothered to teach them to you and when simply being quiet and out of the way sufficed for most caretakers. He looked like the type of person who had been taught manners, anyone like her would have already sat down on the couch or rummaged in the cupboards.

He nodded and looked around the space. Despite talking with food in her mouth, she was a little self-conscious, especially now that they were finally in the light and she could get a good look at him.

He was handsome, but not in the way that most people would find conventionally attractive. His nose was prominent, and he had a scar - faded, but there-that bisected his cheek and ended just above his brow. She wanted to touch it, but she shook off the thought and dug back into her Chinese food. Maybe he wasn’t even that handsome, she decided, glancing at one very large uncovered ear before staring into the food in her hand with a grin she couldn’t quite mask on her face. Maybe he was just handsome to her because of whatever was going on between them.

She polished off the Chinese in record time, tossed the fork in her sink, and the box in the trash. Her back was turned to him for a moment, but she could feel his eyes on her. He was too serious for her, she’d decided. She wasn’t used to serious.

Finn hardly had a serious bone in his body, expect for the parts of him that worried about his friends, and even that was a warm seriousness. Rose could be serious when she wanted to be, but that was mostly when she was studying for her electrical engineering exams and when she and Rey were elbow deep in a fix it project, and she could still be persuaded to laugh. 

She wondered if Kylo ever laughed. Somehow, he didn’t seem the type, and yet Rey liked to think that if she could laugh after what she had been through, anyone could.

“I feel like I should offer you coffee or something?” Her coffee pot was ancient, another one of her scavenged pieces from the local thrift shop. Rose had helped her replace the heating element, which of course was only slightly more affordable than buying a completely new coffee pot, but she hated the idea of the stout little thing being in a dump somewhere. A penny saved was a penny earned after all.

She’d bought her trunk from the same thrift shop. She’d always wanted a trunk. When you’re a child whose possessions are kept in a trash bag, you always wish you had something better to keep them in, especially something with a lock so the other children, or worse, the adults in the home you’d been thrust into didn’t rob you blind in the night or simply toss your things out for the fun of it. Having it now made her feel, despite her circumstances, a bit posh. It was a vintage thing from the 1940’s, made of dark stained wood and tarnished brass hardware. It was covered in dings and scratches, and on the side there was chipped white paint where Rey could almost make out the name of the previous owner. Inside was a white and blue plaid lining and several things she considered her prized possessions, including what evidently was a selkie’s skin.

“Coffee would be nice.”

She had a feeling that she’d need a cup anyway. It was late and if it were any other day she’d already be in bed so that she wouldn’t wind up feeling like a zombie in the morning. She had pulled the short straw on graduate assistantships and had been given the 8am freshman biology lab to teach. She envied Finn’s afternoon teaching assistant position and Rose’s placement in the writing center. At least, she thought, they worked three days a week and she only worked two. It almost made up for having to be up early.

* * *

Her space was messy, but in a charming way. It was clear to him that she didn’t have much that she could make a mess with, yet there were two throw blankets crumpled on the nearly threadbare couch to his right. On a very small coffee table, which he suspected might actually be a children’s dinner table, he spied three coffee cups drained of their contents, none of which matched, piles of textbooks and papers stacked precariously, and a smattering of pens and highlighters. There was also a rather ancient looking laptop sitting on the couch, which he suspected she might have bought second hand as well and likely some years ago. It had stickers stuck to its top, though he couldn’t see what they were or what they said.

She didn’t have a television, or any other technology besides the laptop and the phone he’d seen her with earlier. She also didn’t have a dining room table or chairs, or really anywhere to sit other than the couch. The wall opposite the entrance was lined with large windows which gave a spectacular view of the exterior wall of the next building over and little else. She must get some decent sunlight through them, he thought, as he took note of a large variety of succulents and cactuses she had growing on the sill. They were about all she had in the space for décor. The walls were an off-white almost cream color, but had nothing on them, and other than the disorganization and the dishes on the table, the place was quite clean.

She handed him a coffee cup, this one green printed in yellow with the words “Campus Sustainability Dept.” As she walked over to the couch, she unsteadily carried her own mug in the same hand as a fistful of creamer cups and sugar packets. After she deposited them on the table, adding to the clutter and moving her laptop onto the book pile, she patted the space next to her for him to sit.

Rather, she patted the cushion on the other side of the couch from the one where she was currently making herself small. He could take a hint. Despite the fact that she’d reached out to him, that she’d held his hand and walked him to her home, he knew that she was still frightened of him. He imagined that it was a fight for her, to stay afraid when he knew that the magic that bound them was also doing its work to try to make her feel that his presence was good and right and that it was nothing to worry about. He hated it. He hated the idea that she wasn’t being allowed to feel what she wanted to feel. He hated that he still couldn’t be angry with her.

“Cream or sugar?” she offered.

He shook his head, “Just black is fine.”

He took a sip and burnt his tongue, but didn’t react to the pain as he watched her take every single packet of sugar and all the creamer and one by one, dump it into her drink. He wasn’t even sure that what she was about to drink could in good conscience be called coffee anymore.

“Kylo?” she asked, and he felt his heart skip. To hear his name on her tongue, the lilt it had in her accent, it felt right.

“Yes?” he responded, strangely eager to please in a way he’d never been before. He wondered if they’d talked before fate intervened if he still would've liked her voice so much. He thought that the answer might be yes.

“What’s going to happen to us?”

He wanted to groan, but stayed quiet. She’d called them “us”. It felt so good to have her consider him attached to her somehow. It felt right that she already knew that this affected them both. He hadn’t even begun to explain it to her. Hell, he didn’t even know her name yet. He’d been too confused and shocked to ask.

He sighed instead. “A lot of things. In the old times you’d know, but that was a long time ago, before my parents even. I’m supposed to explain it all to you, but I’d like to know what to call you first. I have a name for you, the…curse,” he decided that word was best, “gives you a name in my head, but it’s a title, it’s not your name, and I know enough to know you wouldn’t like it.”

She frowned. Perhaps he shouldn’t have mentioned it at all. She would ask now, and he’d have to admit that his brain had been going on the whole time calling her mate or wife. She looked too young to be a wife, and for the first time he was struck by a concern that even the curse couldn’t hold back from him. He was too old for her. He was young, or at least he’d always felt he was young, but she looked hardly older than twenty, and he was in his early thirties. He’d have to ask her.

Of course, his parents had been of a similar age when they met, but he didn’t want to be his parents. Not with her. She was pretty and young and clearly bright. He didn’t want to take everything from her, not like she had taken the water from him, not like his parents had taken everything from each other.

“Rey,” she said finally, obviously deciding not to ask and taking his word for it.

He was relieved. “Rey,” he repeated. It was a pretty name, if an odd one. He decided, however, he didn’t exactly have the right to point that out, not when she already knew his.

“It’s not short for anything,” she added. It was a question, he was sure, she was asked frequently.

“It’s nice,” he said quickly, and he meant it.

* * *

She was fighting the urge to move over to him, to rest her head in his lap, or perhaps to tangle her fingers in his hair and run her finger down his scar liked she’d wanted to just minutes before. His presence in her space was strangely loud in her head, but otherwise unobtrusive. She had to ball her hands into fists and keep them busy in her pockets or on her coffee cup to keep herself from reaching out to him. It was terrifying, but she couldn’t be scared of him and that scared her even more. She didn’t like the feeling that something bigger than them was pushing them together, and yet there was nothing she could do about it other than fight the suggestions popping into her head at an alarming rate.

When she thought about it for a minute they did make sense though. Rey had never dated before, but she imagined that if she had a type he’d fit fairly well in it. He was a large guy. His arms, unobscured by the short sleeves of his black t-shirt, were toned and appeared strong; she’d always thought she’d like someone who could pick her up, who could go on hikes with her. He also, other than the silence and the stalking, seemed to be the sort of person who didn’t appear to be a serial killer, which was also something she liked in a man. Maybe her attraction towards him had less to do with selkie men having “seductive powers” over women, and more to do with the fact that he might just be the sort of man she would feel attracted to. It felt like wishful thinking, but also made some sense.

“So,” she said, taking a deep look into her coffee cup as if it held the secrets to the universe and would tell her what to do next. “You’re going to tell me… things?”

He gave a noncommittal shrug. “I’d imagine it would help matters. Maybe it won’t. Seems like you did some research already.”

She sighed. He had her there. The problem was she couldn’t really tell the fact from the fiction. She figured the elephant in the room was a good way to start.

“So that jacket, it’s your… skin?”

He was staring into his cup as well, but she saw him glance over to her when she asked it. She’d either done astoundingly good or astoundingly poor research.

“Yes, but it sounds creepier than it is. To you it looks like a leather jacket, but until you touched it, it was like a robe of fur. It’s kind of an odd thing, depends on who touches it. My mother–”

He stopped and she saw a strange expression, something like regret, cross his face. It was decidedly very human, and it was enough for her to set her cup down and slip, cautiously toward him across the couch.

He seemed to take comfort in it even though she still wasn’t touching him. A good inch separated their shoulders, but she took comfort in the nearness too.

“Anyway, it changes into what the person who claims it would want. Usually it’s a jacket, as I understand. It makes you want to keep it. It’s supposed to make the whole thing less… uncomfortable.”

She nodded. It made about as much sense as anything else she supposed. “Has anyone else ever picked up your skin before?”

She asked the question, but it felt uncomfortable to her. The story she’d read had shown that selkies could leave their partners if they found their skin, so it was possible that she wasn’t the first person to stumble across his. The thought upset her; she didn’t want anyone else to have had him before.

He was hers. She flushed at the thought. She’d always been a little territorial with things she claimed as her own, but never people. Though, she supposed, she’d only ever had one person close to her before, though now she had Rose, which made it more like two. She didn’t have to be territorial over them, however. She knew for a fact that they’d always be there for her.

He looked confused for a moment. It was a strangely innocent look on him, like he was someone used to having all the answers and that being caught off guard was something he was a little uncomfortable with. “No. I never wanted anyone to find it, and I always hid it well.”

She hadn’t expected that response and stared back into her cup of coffee to hide a half embarrassed and half hurt expression. So the stories were true. She’d stolen him from the lake, and he had no qualms with telling her as much.

“Then why was it on the shore?” she asked, unable to help herself. “Why didn’t you hide it someplace without people?”

* * *

He huffed. It was a good question, and he had a good answer, as unbelievable as it was, because he hadn’t hidden it amongst the rocks at all. He’d put in the lock box he kept in the woods, he was certain of it, because he truly hadn’t wanted to find someone. He’d seen what the curse had done to his parents, and he had no interest in such a life for himself. He’d always been careful to lock it away, and then she fell in the water, and somehow, as if by magic, which he was certain it was, it was directly in her path.

“Look,” he said, a bit annoyed, again less with her and more with the situation. “The thing about seal skins is they’re well… slippery?”

“You dropped it?” she asked incredulously. Her mouth was agape and she was leaning into him in a way that he would have found rather sweet if it weren’t for the fact that he was moderately perturbed.

“No, not like that. What I mean is that they kind of have a mind of their own. Curses are magic in a sense and magic is ‘slippery’. Did anyone ever tell you stories about genies when you were a kid?”

He remembered wearing out multiple tapes of Aladdin when he was young, often to drown out the sound of his parents fighting outside his bedroom door.

“No one ever told me any stories as a child.”

There was a finality to the statement that shocked him for a moment. Maybe, if she started to trust him, he’d ask about it later. He had no right to ask yet though. He’d been lucky that she’d even let him in the door.

“Well, maybe legal terms make more sense. Magic has a lot of loopholes and things that it can do that don’t necessarily make sense because it’s… magic. There’s laws that govern it like anything else, but it can do things that make your head spin. I don’t think it’s normally what happens, but there’s a theory that my relatives had that your skin finds your… well…” he stopped. It seemed too personal to say the word soulmate, just like it felt too personal to say the word wife, let alone the word mate. He didn’t have too many appropriate alternatives, however. He wondered how many hundreds of years back in time he’d have to go to kill the relative that was first cursed in order to save himself and all the generations in between the discomfort of having this same conversation.

It was easier for them, back when people knew about curses and selkies and fae. He wished that he would have listened a bit more to his parents when they were trying to prepare him for all of this.

“They think it finds one person, the person it’s meant to go to. Some relatives have had so much faith in it that they leave it out purposefully for someone to find, but I never really believed in it. I never wanted to give up my skin, so I locked it up every time I came ashore. I locked it up yesterday, but it ended up in the rocks, almost a half mile away from where I left it, and no one could have moved it. You would have walked straight past it if you didn’t slip…”

“You saw me slip?”

He nodded, “I was walking back to where I left it so that I could return to the lake, but then you were there and I saw you fall, and then before I could do anything you were holding my skin.”

She groaned and fell back onto the couch. He could feel her frustration. He wanted to soothe her, to say it would all be alright and that they’d make it work, but that was the bond talking, and he was frustrated as well. He hadn’t asked for this, and neither had she.

She scrubbed at her eyes with the heels of her palms, but he knew instinctively that she wasn’t crying. He had a feeling that it would take a lot more than being overwhelmed to make her cry. She was strong; he could already tell. He’d never thought of the sort of person he would want to find his skin, mostly because he’d never wanted anyone to find it in the first place, but strong was something he knew he’d need in a partner, if only because he was as messed up as he was.

“I’m getting my masters of science,” she groaned. “Six years of logic and math and every science class they offer and you’re telling me magic is fucking real? And not just magic, but fate?”

He sighed, only able to imagine the kind of shock it must be to someone who wasn’t raised knowing that not everything could be explained by measurable forces. Part of him was almost glad that she couldn’t believe it; if she’d just rolled with it he’d have felt like the compulsion had changed her too much and it would have made him feel guilty.

“You’re telling me to believe in fate after the life I’ve had?” she all but growled. That shocked him, evidently magic she could handle, but fate was the part that pissed her off.

Her anger threw him; he couldn’t reach his anger over the compulsion, but evidently she could dig deeper than him, and fate was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

“I don’t like it any more than you do,” he managed with his voice raised. He realized that he could, in fact, get a little perturbed because yes, she hadn’t wanted this, but neither had he. He’d spent every single day of his life fighting against what he had been told was his path. He’d seen pain and death for struggling against fate, but he’d ended up without a choice anyway and that made him mad, and if he tried, he could almost be mad at her too.

“You can’t tell me that everything happens for a reason, you can’t tell me I don’t have a choice. I fought and crawled to get away from what everyone said should happen to me, and I’m going to fight and crawl my way out of this.”

That hurt. It really did, and he broke. “Then hit me! Make me go!”

It was the only way to break the bond. The old tales got that much right. He’d follow her to the ends of the earth because he had to until he either found his skin, or she struck him three times and made him angry enough to search it out. Until then, he would be physically unable to actively search for it. If she left it somewhere that he could find it, entirely by accident on both their sides, he could go free, but the curse wouldn’t let him search it out, and the compulsion would make her unwilling to keep his skin out in the open. It was the curse’s survival instinct; it was like a living thing in that way. It wanted selkies and their partners to stay together, to reproduce, to continue the cycle. It was sick and twisted and it had always made him ill to think of it, especially now, because he didn’t really want her to hit him. He wanted to wrap her up in his arms and beg her to let him stay.

She was his. He’d never wanted someone, but now that he had her, he couldn’t imagine being without her.

* * *

Rey sat up. He sounded angry, and her first instinct was to do what he said, to strike him. She even raised her hand to him to do it, but found that she couldn’t. Not because of the strange compulsion she’d had before to keep his skin safe, or because of the strange rightness she had felt holding his hand and at his side.

No. She didn’t strike him because she saw in his eyes, dark and deep like the lake he’d come from, that he was just as frightened and upset as she was. He didn’t want this any more than she did, but he was trying to explain it to her and make it work, and when she was honest with herself she realized that maybe, just maybe, as insane as it was, she might actually want him to stay. She’d always been alone, she’d always wanted someone to stay with her, to come back for her, and while she’d found it in Finn, she thought that maybe, just maybe, she could like Kylo being that for her too.

She still hated the idea of fate, the idea that it could either be a curse or the indomitable and ineffable plan of the universe that was making her think the way she was, but she saw something in Kylo that spoke to her. She had a feeling that if she listened, she might find a kindred spirit in him.

So instead of striking him, her hand went forward and cupped his jaw, her thumb moving up to trace the scar on his cheek like she’d wanted to do since she first saw it.

The anger left the room instantaneously, leaving behind a vacuum he filled with a meaningful look and a cautious hand pressed gently to the side of her face.


	5. Chapter 5

“Hand me the micropipette. No. No. No. The micropipette. Right there. No.”

Rey was going to strangle a freshman. She imagined the letter she’d have to write to the student’s mother. “Dear Mrs. Hait, so terribly sorry to bother you, but Daniel won’t be making it home this summer. He went the entire semester dicking off in lab, and I strangled him when he couldn’t figure out what a micropipette was despite an entire semester of using one. My apologies, but I frankly did him a favor, he wasn’t going to pass that lab practical. Assuming he likely failed all his other courses, his death will additionally save you the financial burden of student loans for a semester where he earned no credits toward his degree.” She was lucky she already had her green card or she’d probably be deported, though Americans did tend to like her accent quite a bit, so perhaps she could talk her way out of prison time. Really it would be self-defense against stupidity.

She set down the agar plate she was holding, picked up the micropipette, and thought about smacking him over the head with it. She only decided not to because the equipment was worth more to the school than she was, and while the boy before her would likely never see his diploma, she was looking forward to receiving her master’s in just around a month. As satisfying as it would be to literally beat knowledge into his head, she didn’t want to risk a charge on her account that she couldn’t pay back, and even the $50 the pipette cost was out of her budget.

“Okay, look I’m going to put this in the incubator, and you are going to go to the tutoring center.”

She picked the plate back up and did her best to ignore the bubbles in the gel. It was already contaminated, she was almost certain. She thought for a moment that maybe she might be able to get him some bonus points if he sat down at a microscope for a few hours and tried to identify whatever it was that he’d grown that he absolutely wasn’t supposed to have grown. The lecture professor was a softie at heart, and she might be able to talk him into it to save the kid’s semester.

She changed her mind when she looked up from the plate and into the face of the dumbfounded and mildly perturbed student.

“Why are you still standing there? I mean right now. If you want to have any chance of passing the practical you need legitimate help. Stop staring at your lab partner like you don’t know what I’m saying, I know she’s been doing your calculations all semester and she’s going to pass. Go on, run, and study like your life depends on it.”

She gave him her most wicked grin, “Because it might.”

She had long since determined that when it came to college freshmen, it was better to be feared than loved. She made up for it by being a fairly relaxed grader when it came to lab reports because she remembered how difficult it was to recall the rules for significant figures and APA citations and writing rules, and it had worked well for her. Her students, with the exception of the young Mr. Hait who was currently hightailing it out the door, were more prepared than the other TA’s kids for the final lab practical and were getting higher marks in the core course. If it weren’t for the fact that she liked fieldwork so much, she’d probably sign up to teach. She was good at it when students didn’t test her patience.

She wished determining what she was going to do after her master’s was the greatest of her concerns at the moment, but it wasn’t even close. She had, for all intents and purposes, a monster from legend in her apartment. Technically he had clarified that while he was indeed a selkie, he was also half human.

Either way, he’d slept on her couch and she’d locked her bedroom door, not because she was afraid of him, but because she was afraid that she would invite him in for the night. Despite everything he’d said about curses and magic and fate, she wasn’t quite ready to move her first relationship on so quickly.

She wanted to kick herself for even thinking of it as a relationship. She’d listened to him about the restrictions they were under, and she had been pleased to hear that the thoughts that she was having, the things she was feeling about him that he called the “compulsion” of the curse would be fading soon. If she was going to figure out how to get them out of the mess they were in, or at least learn to deal with it, she was going to need to know her thoughts were her own, and not some ancient magic making her horny for the sake of continuing said curse.

“I can’t promise you anything because I only know what I’ve been told, but I think within the week we’ll both stop feeling so… hazy around each other. I think it’s designed to keep you from running from me, and honestly I’m a little grateful for it because if you ran I’d be compelled to follow and that isn’t what I’d want for either of us.”

That’s what he’d said, being kind enough to use the word “hazy” instead of smitten or horny, which is what it felt like to her and she suspected what it felt like for him. She’d wanted to ask him what it was that he wanted for them, but she hadn’t. Saying something like that would be speaking a “them” into existence and while she hadn’t yet decided that “them” wasn’t what she wanted, she also wanted to get to know him a lot better with a clear mind before she made any decisions as to whether they were going to be a “they” at all.

He’d been asleep when she left for class, and it had been foolish of her to double check the lock on her trunk. He’d already told her that he wouldn’t go looking for it and that helped soothe her rankled nerves. He’d seemed honest when he told her that although being bound wasn’t something that he’d ever wanted for himself, he wasn’t planning to, and frankly couldn't, take his skin back and free himself. He’d also seemed to understand that the curse made it impossible for her to give it to him of her own free will.

“Wait to get to know me a little better,” he’d said sheepishly, though she had a feeling he very rarely was anything close to sheepish, and she was only seeing it because of the exhaustion they were both feeling. “Once you see what I’m really like, when you don’t feel the need to hide my skin anymore, you’ll probably be able to leave it out for me to find.”

She was struck again, thinking about his words, with the sensation that he was more like her than he knew. He carried a sadness in him, and she could see it beyond his dark and brooding exterior. He’d been abandoned too.

She wasn’t sure how she knew it, and she was sure that their circumstances were much different, but she could feel his loneliness. He’d isolated himself in the lake, he’d said he didn’t want anyone in his life, but she could see that it was a cover for something, a mask. She’d love to see beyond it, and she was fairly certain it wasn’t the curse talking. 

“Rey?”

She glanced up and took the lab report she was being handed and refocused her attention on a student across the room who was definitely confused about which setting they needed to be using on their microscope. If she had explained it once, she’d explained it a thousand times, start on the lowest magnification, focus, and then work your way up. She sighed, grateful for the distraction. It was proof that even though she was bound to some creature from the black lagoon, or rather a blue lake, and most specifically to Kylo, life went on and students didn’t care about whatever her personal problems were., They just wanted to grow their bioluminescent bacteria.

* * *

She’d been gone when he woke up, but it didn’t worry him. He hadn’t expected for her to put her life on hold for him. She was a student and a teacher. An ecologist she’d said; he liked that. He liked a lot of things about Rey and he hadn’t expected to. It was more than the compulsion of the curse, and he was almost willing to put stock into the soulmate theory when he thought about it.

She was gorgeous, smaller than him but strong and lithe. She was intelligent, a quick learner, but opinionated, and while he wasn’t certain that she was ready to adjust her whole worldview to what he knew to be true, she was the sort of person who trusted what she could see and feel. It had made explaining what was going on between them much easier than he would have expected. He had half expected her to start taking notes as he talked into the wee hours of the morning, but instead she’d simply listened and absorbed what he was saying. Somehow he knew she was mentally comparing it to what she’d already researched. It was amusing to him to watch all her micro expressions and try to determine, from the tiniest furrow of her brow or the slightest quirk of her lip, whether she had seen her work proved right or wrong.

When he’d pushed himself off her couch it had been a little past 8:30 a.m. according to her microwave clock, but a little past 10:30 a.m. according to her stove clock. He’d smiled at that, and he’d decided it best to trust the microwave. He’d also found a note near it, written in the same messy writing he’d seen on her notes on the table.

“Sorry, I teach an early class. I think I have some poptarts in the cupboard? Will you even eat those? Sorry again, I’m a starving graduate student, but if you can find it, you’re welcome to it. I’ll be back later, I don’t know when because my professors are trying to kill me. Not literally. I’m sorry, I don’t know what to write. I’ve never been in this situation before, which is probably obvious, but anyway you can stay or leave if you prefer. If you go and you want to see me later you can leave me a note.”

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a poptart, probably the nineties. He wondered if she could even remember the nineties. He’d been young but he didn’t even know if she’d been alive for any of it. His most conservative guess for her age was twenty-three given her progression through graduate school, and while it gave him some comfort to know that he hadn’t been bonded to an eighteen year old, he was curious as to how she’d react when he told her that he was nine years older than her.

He sighed; they had a lot to figure out. He had a lot to figure out. He was already itching to get back into the water, to feel the freeness he could only feel in his seal form. The idea of never feeling that again made him extremely uncomfortable, and yet he wouldn’t search out his skin, not only because he couldn’t by the laws of the curse, but also because he had seen what it could do to someone.

He’d have to talk about his parents eventually. Rey deserved to know what he already did about what the curse did to people, but he didn’t want to upset her yet, and he’d long since decided that he wasn’t going to be like his parents. He’d let the past die, he’d kill it if he had to, and in a way he already had. Rey deserved to know about that too, but not yet.

It was selfish of him to want to show her the best parts of him, the best parts of their bond, before he started telling her all the things she deserved to know. He let himself be selfish, because it wasn’t quite so selfish as he’d been in the past, not when he was thinking about her happiness too. There was nothing that they could do intentionally to break the bond, not unless she struck him, and he’d already seen in her eyes that unless he did something seriously cruel, something awful, she’d have no interest in doing so. Even when the compulsion started to let them have a greater level of freeness over their thoughts and actions, he knew that he didn’t want to fight with her.

He sighed and thought about leaving, but instead decided it would be easier to stay for at least the day. One of the things he had to think about was housing arrangements. Money wasn’t an issue for him, a result of the smart investing he’d done years before, and the fact that he’d been handed a small sum to begin with. One thing that was true about both sides of his family, selkie and human, was that they’d never been poor. He could certainly afford to find an apartment, purchase some new clothes, and pick up just about anything else he needed now that he was on land indefinitely.

He knew already that Rey had no such luxury. He still wasn’t sure what her story was, other than it was clearly not a warm and fuzzy one. His wasn’t either, truth be told, but he’d always at least been financially comfortable. He’d never gone hungry, and he’d never wanted for much, except for the things that money couldn’t buy. Rey hadn’t been so lucky, and it wasn’t just the worrying lack of food in her cupboards that told him so, or even the ancient laptop or the threadbare couch. It was what she’d said to him the night before about fighting her way out of what people said should happen to her. Sure, he was fighting against a sort of predetermination himself, but the way she said it, well, he wasn’t stupid. He knew that people without the means had to work twice as hard or more as someone with them to get even half as far.

He hated the idea that she’d lived that life; he hated that anyone did. As much as he thought of himself as the sort of person who didn’t stop to help people, it had more to do with his issues than it did with his outlook on the world. He didn’t like being around people all that much; he’d get used to it for Rey’s sake, but he’d never been the sort to be against charity, especially when it meant he didn’t have to speak to anyone to do it. He was introverted, and very likely an asshole, but he wasn’t cruel, or at least he didn’t want to be.

He thought about what he might be able to do for Rey, but he also imagined that she’d be too proud to take anything from him, not to mention their current predicament would make it seem too much, he thought, like she would be indebted to him for the help. Despite the strength of the attraction he was already feeling for her, the last thing he needed was to buy her something and have her think that he expected certain “favors” in return. He didn’t like the idea of making her uncomfortable or upset, and so he had even more to think about than he could have imagined. At the moment, however, he decided that he could at the very least pick up a bit for her.

He had no intentions of snooping. He didn’t even plan to go into her bedroom at all if he could help it. He simply neatened her stacks of books and papers and went to work washing her dishes. It had been a very long time since he’d done anything like house chores; they’d never really been required of him as a child either, but he did them anyway, if a bit slowly.

When he was done he did what he could to neaten her other piles around the space, and finally sat down with the only book he could find that wasn’t a textbook. It was a fantasy novel, and he couldn’t help but grin when he thought about her reading it. Maybe there’d been another reason why she had taken the news better than he’d hoped.

* * *

Rey came back from the lab exhausted as hell. She’d been running a backlog of water samples for her thesis advisor’s research project. Dr. Holdo was a brilliant ecologist, and an even better advocate for the right to clean water for people around the globe, but Rey also found, more often than not, that her determination to save the world caused her to go through lab assistants like, well, water. Rey was the only soul that had stayed on for more than a semester, and three hours of running samples was worth the time the professor spent reading through Rey’s thesis on the impact of white nose syndrome on the little brown bat population in America. The disease had come over on the boots of a European spelunker, and Rey had decided to tackle studying it as a sort of apology to the universe. If a European was the reason for the problem, she, as a European was going to try her damnedest to fix it.

When she opened her door, she almost thought it wasn’t hers. Kylo was on the couch reading her copy of  _ Howl’s Moving Castle _ , the one full of sticky notes where she’d done a sort of rudimentary literary criticism in undergrad, and her apartment was oddly neat. She hadn’t expected him to stay, even though she’d felt him nearby as soon as she’d reached her apartment building.

“Sorry,” he said, sitting up and marking his place in the book by setting it face down on the coffee table. She almost laughed; he was one of those people. She was a receipt paper, gum wrapper, shirt tag, napkin, paper scrap sort of bookmark person herself, although when she was making notes, she did have the requisite level of civility to use post it notes. Admittedly they were the free handout sticky notes that health centers, student organizations, and the occasional church or business gave away as advertising with logos and phone numbers printed on every piece, but they were sticky notes.

“You cleaned?” she asked, though it wasn’t really a question. It was obvious that he had. It was kind, and she wasn’t used to kindness from strangers. She wasn’t even sure that she could still call him a stranger.

He nodded. “I hope you don’t mind. I stayed out of your room. I didn’t want to intrude.”

She understood that when he said the word “intrude” he meant it in the way that traditional manners dictated that one just didn’t wander into their host’s bedroom because it was a private space, and also that he knew that it was the room where she was most likely to be keeping his skin.

“Thank you,” she said simply, and dropped her bag and slid off her shoes, placing them more carefully and precisely than normal by the door than she normally would bother. She really was grateful. She didn’t like her apartment being messy; it kind of stressed her out at times when it was, but she couldn’t find the time to keep it clean. Organized was outside her vocabulary at the moment unless it was related to a project or a paper.

She flopped onto the couch next to him and closed her eyes. When she felt his hand cautiously touch her back, she stiffened for a moment, but quickly relaxed. She still wasn’t used to casual touching, even if she’d become more acclimated to it since becoming friends with Finn and Rose. With Kylo though, the touch was particularly gentle, and once she identified it as such she melted under it. He gave her back a reassuring rub and she practically moaned. She really wasn’t used to being touched.

* * *

Kylo knew that wanting to touch her was something that would fade overtime - at least it would if they didn’t build up a sense of intimacy before that. When he heard the soft sounds Rey made as he touched her, even innocently and gently, just providing comfort, he decided that he wasn’t going to ever let a day pass without giving her that kind of physical reassurance. She melted into him, and it felt right when she sprawled out on her side, and his lap became her pillow.

“I was thinking that we should go grocery shopping tomorrow,” he said cautiously. “You barely have anything to eat here.”

Rey sighed shook her head. He’d been more or less expecting that sort of response. “I can’t afford it, I eat most of my meals in the dining hall. I can bring you stuff back if you want.”

He couldn’t help but smile at how automatically she’d decided that he was staying, at how she was honest with him about her situation. She wasn’t pretending to be anyone other than who she was.

“I meant I’d buy you groceries Rey. I can afford it.”

She made a sound that was somewhere between a snort and a laugh, “You’re not buying me groceries, and somehow I doubt you could. I don’t think ‘seal man in a lake where there aren’t supposed to be seals’ is a job that pays very well.”

He chuckled at that and experimentally let his other hand brush some of her hair to the side. She didn’t protest, and he could all but feel how tired she was. There probably wasn’t much she’d object to at the moment, and while he wouldn’t take advantage, it did make it a particularly good time to insist on necessities for her own good that he didn’t want her to argue against too heavily.

“No, but smart investing and not needing to touch anything but petty cash for fourteen years does. I was raised on shore Rey, I know what I have in the bank, and I know you couldn’t possibly break it with groceries.”

She seemed interested in that and shifted slightly on his lap so that she was looking directly up at him. “You were raised on shore? Fourteen years?”

“I’m thirty-two,” he said, somewhat relieved when she nodded instead of panicking or pushing away from him, “And yes, I was raised onshore. Selkies… we’re born normally like people. When we’re in our teens, we grow our seal skins and shed them. That’s when we can make the decision to stay on land longer or go to the water. I don’t want to talk about it quite yet though, if that’s alright.”

She nodded again, “There are things I don’t want to talk about yet either. It’s okay.”

He was grateful, and even more so when she closed her eyes and resettled on his lap. It felt right, but he had a feeling that what they were doing that very moment, getting close, getting intimate, was one of the things she wasn’t ready to talk about.

“Let me buy you groceries?” he requested again, “If you’re going to let me stay here, even just until I can find someplace of my own, I want to. I’m a shit cook, but I can make a few things alright and it’s better than having to walk to campus every time you want to eat isn’t it?”

He didn’t speak the fact that he felt compelled to see her fed and fed well. It was one of those things that went hand in hand with the intimate words he still wasn’t voicing. They weren’t even to a point where they talked about whether or not they might be able to make any of this work beyond the here and now, so if he said something along the lines of “you’re my mate and I want to provide for you and keep you healthy” he’d probably implode the precarious peace that had her hair splayed out across his lap and her eyes closed.

“If you keep cleaning my apartment and really want to feed me, you can stay as long as you want.”

He could hear the sleep hanging heavily in her voice, and he felt a sudden desperate need to press a kiss to her forehead. He didn’t, of course, but he did brush her hair gently through his fingers. It was progress, even if it was slow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Horrible undergrad student based <s>loosely</s> not so loosely on a student I had as a TA. If you haven't guessed, I'm a salty grad student. I did my undergrad in Bio, but feel free to let me know if you see any inconsistencies, I study information science these days!  
If you're wondering what a micropipette is [this](https://www.minipcr.com/wp-content/uploads/miniPCR-micropipette-2017-web-thumb.png) is what it looks like.  
[This](https://www.apsnet.org/edcenter/disimpactmngmnt/labexercises/PlantBiotechnology/Pages/Activity4.aspx)is the actual lab that I have Rey teaching. It's a favorite of mine.


	6. Chapter 6

The door swung open abruptly, sending Rey off Kylo’s lap at the speed of light. She smacked the top of her head into his jaw with the swiftness of her response, but they both knew that it didn’t count as one of the three strikes she would need to render against him in order to get him to take his skin back and leave. It was one of those incidental, accidental contacts that could leave someone miffed, but not angry enough to leave or hold a grudge.

“Rey Johnson it’s time for you to get your ass to the bi-weekly mandatory pub trivia nig– What the hell?”

Out of the corner of her eye Rey saw Kylo massaging his jaw where she’d accidentally hit him, but she was focused on the fact that Finn was standing in her doorway with his jaw all but on the floor. He was flanked on either side by Rose and Poe, a friend of his and a fellow grad student in the engineering department who Rey had gotten to know mostly through the bi-weekly mandatory pub trivia night that Finn had thrust upon them. Their team was currently dominating with five first place nights in a row. She had it on good authority that the bartenders were trying to find a category that they weren’t good at but had failed miserably thus far.

Rey felt her cheeks heating as Rose too looked a bit shocked. Poe, however, was already giving her a thumbs up.

Rose, ever the voice of reason, and blessedly a fan of the idea of a girl code, piped up before Rey could, “Come on you two, let’s head out. I have a lesson to give you on the way about why I always suggest knocking first.”

Poe got one last cheesy grin and wink in before turning to walk away when Finn broke out of his trance, and despite his love for and possible fear of Rose, he was not prepared to walk away so easily.

“You know we need four people to enter,” he said, plastering on a grin that appeared on the surface to be friendly, but implied an upcoming line of questioning that would be anything but where Kylo was concerned.

“Sorry Finn,” Rey said, glad that she’d managed to find her voice. “I’ve been having a hell of a week and I guess I forgot about trivia night. I really thought it was next week.”

He nodded amicably, but she thought she saw his eye twitching. She wasn’t sure how she was going to explain all of this to him, but she could see him flicking on concern and protective switches in his head. “Oh, that’s okay Rey. Why don’t you invite your friend along? You know teams can have up to six people, I don’t see how five will be a problem.”

There was something like an annoyed groan from Poe, who clearly was more annoyed that Finn had essentially set them all up to split the night’s prize between five instead of four, than he was entertained by the drama of it all. Rose gave Finn a sharp elbow to the ribs, but it didn’t deter him either.

Rey saw Kylo’s hand leave his jaw and felt his fingers slip between hers. He didn’t seem nearly as upset about being caught as she was, and the encouraging squeeze he gave her palm said “it’s okay”, “I’m game”, and “we’ll talk more later” all at once. She only grinned when she heard a light rumbling from his stomach that also said “plus I haven’t eaten all day because you barely have food in your house and I’m not against bar food as long as it’s food”. Her stomach was in total agreement, even if she shot Finn an annoyed look from across the room.

“Oh alright, if you three really don’t mind, we’ll come along.”

There was another groan from Poe, but this time his ribs were the ones struck by Rose.

Rey went after her purse, which was locked in her bedroom, but once she emerged, she blushed as she watched Kylo making his own introductions. Finn was barely hiding his scowl, Rose could hardly contain her glee, and Poe was, well, being Poe. She’d hear about this later, she was certain.

* * *

The category was “folklore” and Kylo watched Rey practically implode from across the table. The gathered others, Rey’s friends, were bemoaning their lack of knowledge on the topic and also damning the bartender who organized the event for finally finding something that they weren’t good at.

Finn had spent most of the evening thus far giving him the evil eye, and his girlfriend, Rose, had been mostly grinning at him. He got the feeling that Rey had known Finn longer, and that Rose, while newer to the mix, was equally protective, but a bit more permissive than he was. 

Poe, who Rose had called a flirt, had evidently decided not to hit on Rey while he was present, which, from the woman’s commentary, was a change of pace. Despite not particularly liking the idea of the man having flirted with Rey in the past, Kylo found this amusing.

Unable to help himself, he did give Poe a quick, succinct, and moderately inconspicuous look that said that should he decide to ever flirt with Rey again, he’d have two less limbs, and that Kylo, being the charitable sort, would even let him pick which. 

The protectiveness, the jealousy, if it could be called that, was par for the course with the bond. Rey had literally been under his skin, and he’d be damned if any man would ever touch her with any interest beyond platonic ever again. Or at least that’s what he wanted, but the part of his brain that spoke logic reminded him that who touched her and how was her choice, not his. He still wasn’t prepared for the possibility that once the compulsion settled down, she might decide that neither the words mate or wife fit what she wanted to be to him. There was a possibility, one he didn’t want to even imagine, that she would request they keep the bond platonic. It wasn’t unheard of. It was in his family, but other selkies, those unrelated to him but who still carried the curse in their blood just as much as his kin, had made such arrangements before. His father had known of a woman who had found her mate in a married man. He’d been so devoted to his wife he’d merely kept the selkie woman as a close friend, and she had gone on to have a string of lovers of her own. He’d never heard whether it made her happy or not.

“I actually know a thing or two about it,” he said, trying to distract himself from his own thoughts by adding to the conversation. He hadn’t said much, or even participated in the last few rounds, preferring to watch Rey and her friends enjoy each other’s company while he ate his dinner.

He couldn’t help but give Rey a mischievous smile. Her eyes were practically bulging from their sockets and she was blushing brightly. She’d already promised to keep his secret, and the curse kept her from saying anything about it to the uninitiated anyway, at least not intentionally. She seemed unamused by his tightrope walking comment, and he decided he’d very much like to see the color of red she turned should “selkie” be the answer to a question.

Rose, glad for the assistance, handed him her pencil from across the table and gave Finn another sharp elbow jab to the ribs in order to get him to pass him the answer sheet.

“Remember spelling doesn’t count, we can all help you, but if other teams overhear us they can steal.”

He nodded. He’d been listening to the rules, even if he hadn’t acted like he was when he was picking at his fries. Rey was cooling off across from him now, her blush dulling down to a soft pink.

The bartender, grinning, grabbed the microphone and rather gleefully started reading off the first question while making direct, and rather aggressive eye contact with Finn. Ben was glad to see that Finn was giving it back.

“These Scandinavian figures are much like our American garden gnomes and have been said to do everything from protecting farm buildings to stealing cattle.”

Kylo grinned, thinking fondly of his mother’s large repertoire of tales. He printed the answer quickly, “Tomte”.

Rey shot him a look that didn’t quite imply that he was a cheater, but also didn’t quite imply that she was pleased that he knew the answer anyway.

He smiled back at her.

* * *

They’d won, because of course they had. Rey had almost imploded when Ben had spoken up about the folklore category of all things. It was like he wanted to kill her.

She’d never seen Finn have such a complete one-eighty reaction in her life. Evidently Kylo’s trivia skills, helping them carry the category, were enough to make her oldest friend forgive the fact that Rey had been keeping a “secret boyfriend”. She hadn’t even made an attempt to explain. Secret boyfriend was almost the right descriptor, though it wasn’t the one she’d use.

She wasn’t even sure what she would call them, but she was beginning to like the idea of a “them”, especially since her friends had so quickly climbed onboard. She was beginning, between their quiet walk back to her apartment and his earlier gentleness and insistence on caring for her, to think that he might fill the role of boyfriend well. He didn’t seem interested in rushing her, beyond the fact that she’d already agreed to let him live with her, but that had more to do with the fact that it made sense and she had been the one to decide on it, not him. She wanted to get to know him better, and that was a start.

“I didn’t upset you, did I?”

She was removed from her thoughts by his voice. It was the sort of question that was supposed to sound nonchalant, but she heard the genuine concern behind it.

“No,” she answered both automatically and honestly. “You didn’t. I’m glad Finn likes you.”

He nodded and gave her hand a small squeeze. It felt so much better to be at his side if they were touching; otherwise she felt a strange itch to make contact with him. It was one of the things he’d promised would fade with time and while she liked the idea of their behaviors being more their own, she secretly hoped that it never stopped feeling as good as it did now to be touched by him.

By the time they made it up to her apartment, she was too exhausted to really talk about anything, or at least anything that mattered, but she did want to talk to him. 

“What time do you want to go get groceries in the morning?” It was a simple question, one easy enough to start their conversation.

“Maybe 9:00?” he asked, “I could take you for breakfast… Or not.”

She knew he was reacting to the involuntary negative face she’d pulled at his answer. She didn’t dislike the idea of grabbing breakfast, but she was much more of a brunch person on the weekends.

“I… sleep in a little Saturday mornings,” she said sheepishly, “I don’t really tend to wake up before eleven, I guess I shouldn’t have said the word ‘morning’ when I asked.”

He gave her a look and a ghost of a smile crossed his lips. “Yeah?”

He didn’t sound as incredulous as most people were when they were made aware of her sleep habits, but he did seem amused. She’d been up before him that morning, but he’d evidently figured out that it was only because she’d needed to be. She’d never been able to sleep in as a child. There were always chores to be done, or someone yelling at her to get her “lazy arse” out of bed. When she was finally free of the system and on her way to college in the States, she’d taken advantage of the fact that she could stay in bed without fear that someone would slap her over it.

She didn’t tell him that though. She just replied, “Yeah.”

He shook his head. “Whenever you wake up is fine. Can I ask something of you?”

She wanted to say yes instantly, but that could be dangerous. People had wanted things from her in the past, and while the voice in her head was still telling her that Kylo would never hurt her or misuse her, she had more faith in her experiences than she did in a curse.

“I suppose it depends what it is.”

He nodded, as if expecting her to say so. He was beginning to understand her quite well, and while she’d never really opened up to many people before, she had a feeling that he was constantly trying to figure her out. She was attempting the same.

“I was wondering if I could use your laptop. I don’t have much onshore and if you meant what you said about me staying, I probably should.”

“What did you have offshore?” she blurted out.

So much for keeping the conversation light, she thought, but she relaxed when he smiled.

“Lets just say the needs of a seal and the needs of a man are very different.”

* * *

What could he tell her? He was still himself when he was in his second skin, but he was different. He remembered what life was like on shore, who his parents were, where he’d come from, everything good and bad he’d ever done in his life, but he simply didn’t care very much about it. Human concerns went on the backburner, unless something particularly urgent or necessary came up. He was happy as a seal, he was free. He caught fish in his teeth, swam where he liked, and despite being alone, he liked his life as a seal. It was simple.

He was certain he still hadn’t discovered everything in the lake. There, he’d allowed himself to enjoy the sort of purposeless existence most people enjoyed as a child. The sort of life he’d been too nervous, too scared, and too dark to have when he was younger. He wondered if Rey had ever had that.

“I had everything I needed,” he added simply. He didn’t think he could explain it to her in a way that made sense.

“Do you miss it?”

He frowned. He didn’t want to think about it. “Not yet, but everything I know says that I will.”

He was honest with her, and it hurt him when she frowned in response. He hadn’t wanted to talk about it yet, but he also wasn’t going to lie about it when she asked. He didn’t think he was even capable of lying to her.

“I’m sorry.”

“I know,” he said in a tone he hoped was reassuring, “And even though it’s not your fault, it’s nice to hear you say it. Can I ask you something?”

She nodded, although she seemed a bit nervous at the prospect. He’d have to keep that in mind, that she liked to have a sense of what a question would be before it was even asked.

“Am I making you miss out on something too?”

He didn’t know how to phrase it. He wasn’t pulling her out of a world like she had pulled him, but it didn’t mean that being bonded to him wasn’t taking something from her too. He didn’t know if she had been interested in someone before she held his skin, and the thought he’d had before about platonic relationships was bothering him more than he was willing to admit to himself.

She looked thoughtful and beckoned him back over to the couch where she sat. He hadn’t realized how long he’d just been standing there until she invited him to her side.

“You have to understand,” she said slowly, “I don’t really have anything that anyone could keep me from. I have school, and I have Finn and Rose.”

* * *

She was anxious. She’d asked him to sit close and she wanted to lay her head in his lap like she had before they’d gone out for trivia. She felt safe and warm when she touched him, and the sensation of his hand brushing over her hair had been something magical. She’d never felt so comforted, so loved, so desired, and she wanted to feel it again.

So she did.

He shifted under her when she rested her head on his lap, but he didn’t seem uncomfortable, only a bit surprised. She was glad for it, and while she wanted him to deny her if that’s what he wanted, she also was glad that he didn’t.

“No family?”

She shook her head and closed her eyes. She was too tired to get into it, really.

“You?” she asked in return.

“It’s complicated,” he replied, sounding as tired as she felt. She felt his hands moving carefully through her hair, combing out knots with his fingers methodically. No one had done that before for her. It felt nice, soothing.

“We’re going to have to talk about complicated soon,” she said with a sigh, because while it was true, she hated the thought of it.

“Yes,” he agreed, sounding like he wasn’t particularly thrilled at the prospect either.

“Well, I’ll start,” she said. Her eyes were closed, so she couldn’t see whether he was pleased with the idea. “Least complicated first, and then we can work up to the really messy stuff overtime. Preferably before a week’s out so we can figure out what we’re going to do when we’re feeling less warm and fuzzy.”

She could be pragmatic when the occasion called for it, and the occasion, in her experience, almost always did.

“My parents abandoned me when I was five. I don’t remember anything about them. I was in child protective services until eighteen. I don’t like to talk about it, but I’ll tell you when I’m ready… probably. I told Finn when I was ready. He told me when he was ready. When I was eighteen I managed to get a scholarship, scraped together funds for a plane ticket, got my student visa, and ended up here. Or, well, Arizona, which is completely different from here. When I graduated undergrad I applied for citizenship, gained it, and got a scholarship here. That’s about as uncomplicated as it gets for me.”

It was a lot to tell a person, she supposed. It was for all intents and purposes her life story, or at least the elevator pitch of it. It left out all the excitement about beatings and being half-starved and how she hadn’t cried since she was six because nothing could ever happen to her that was worse than that year. 

She didn’t dare open her eyes and see how he was looking at her. She could feel his eyes on her face, and if he gave her so much as a pitying glance she was afraid she’d fight with him again. The argument they’d had the night before, brief as it was, was as much of a fight as she ever wanted to have with him. She would argue if she had to, but she didn’t want to. She wanted to like him, to keep liking him, and she couldn’t like someone who gave her pity.

His fingers were still carding through her hair, but he didn’t say anything like people usually did when they found out about her life before they met her. He didn’t say “poor thing” or “so sorry” or “do you want to cry about it, it’s okay to cry about it”. He didn’t say anything for a long time. He just pet her hair and looked down at her.

When she opened her eyes, curiosity getting the best of her, she didn’t see pity. She saw sadness, but not pity, and that was something.

“My parents…” he started, but stopped, “There was a lot of fighting when I grew up. It wasn’t great, but I guess looking back it could have been worse. I was a punk as a teen, I screwed up a lot. When I was eighteen I went to the lake and didn’t look back. I had a little money, I made some decent investments so if I ever wanted to come back I had the means to do it, but you already know it wasn’t what I wanted. That’s about as simple as I can make it.”

She gave him what she hoped was a meaningful look, and said the first thing that came to mind, “I can’t believe you just called yourself a ‘punk’. What are you?”

He gave an almost laugh and a surprised smile, and it made her grin. He’d evidently not been expecting that reaction.“Thirty-two,” he reminded, “I’m thirty-two. Why, what would you say?”

She grinned, “Arsehole probably.”

His smile widened and Rey’s did too. She popped off his lap, unlocked her laptop for him, and went to her room to head to bed.

She felt, strangely, like maybe he wasn’t going to be another addition to her sad life story. Not like anyone would believe her if she told them anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rose, as per the usual, is all of us.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: Past child neglect and abuse. This is after the first line break, where Rey discusses her childhood.  
TW: Crime, Violence, Poor Parenting, Death. This is after the second line break, where Ben discusses his past.

A week had passed since she first met Kylo and turned both of their worlds upside down. She’d managed to find something like normalcy in his presence in her apartment. They hadn’t made any headway in their discussions of what they were going to do going forward, but they had shared a bit more about themselves.

Before whatever incident he didn’t want to talk about, he’d evidently wanted to be a writer. He told her that when he was young, he used to practice calligraphy and would write himself short stories in different scripts. She saw him blush when he said it, not only on his face, but also on the tips of his oversized ears. He was self-conscious about them, she’d noticed, but she quite liked them. He wasn’t, however, self-conscious about the rest of his body.

The only bathroom in her apartment had two access doors, a tragic design flaw that was a recipe for disaster. One door opened into the bathroom from her bedroom, the second from the general living room and kitchen space. The morning he took her grocery shopping, she had told him he was welcome to use her shower, and being on her usual morning autopilot, she’d also walked in on him changing without thinking.

She’d lived alone for too long to remember not to just walk into her bathroom without knocking, and while he’d thought to lock the door he’d entered, he hadn’t done the same for her door. She was thankful that he’d only been shirtless at the time, but she hadn’t been able to stop staring, and he had looked, honestly, like he didn’t mind. She might not care about being perfectly well mannered at all times, but she also never intended to be rude, and yet she’d walked in on him and stared. It was hard not to, with him being built like a brick shithouse.

While she had been embarrassed about it for a short while after, they’d done their shopping in a state of relative ease. It had felt nice to walk through the store with him at her side. He hadn’t even needed to touch her to ease the strange need in her chest that was connected to the curse. The domesticity of it all as they walked together and picked up this and that was completely new to her. She’d never really picked anything up from the store that wasn’t coffee, cheap and massively unhealthy frozen tv dinners, boxed mac and cheese, ramen, laundry soap, dish soap, trash bags, or toilet paper. She hadn’t even bought paper towels in years, and she nicked anything else she could from the dining hall including napkins, sugar, salt, pepper, and the occasional odd piece of fruit. He bought nearly a half a cart of fruits and vegetables when she’d admitted to never having a lot of it before.

He’d been happy to do it, and while she’d wanted to feel guilty about it, he’d seemed to take more joy in watching her try to eat a kiwi than it cost him monetarily, so she felt it was okay.

She curled up against his chest. Tonight, he was popping cherries into her mouth. She’d never had them fresh before, just the little ones they put on top of ice-cream. She’d had a lot of new foods since coming to the States and having all but unlimited access to food in the campus dining halls. She’d discovered she quite liked apples and oranges and strawberries, but the menus were set the way they were, and other than the occasional night where she’d felt okay spending her pittance of spending money on takeout, she’d been limited to whatever was being served. It had never included cherries.

“I’m not going to rest until you’ve tried every single fruit,” he said with something like an exasperated laugh.

“How many are there even? Wait, actually I know this. It was in one of my textbooks on biodiversity…”

She tried to dig up the knowledge. It had just been an interesting factoid she’d read semesters ago, and she couldn’t really be sure, so she gave her best ballpark estimate.

“There’s something around 400,000 extant plant species and we can eat something like 2,000 of them…” She thought for a moment about whether he might be able to eat more, but assumed that he was carnivorous when he was in his second skin, just like normal seals were, “But I’ll be damned if I can tell you how many of those are fruits.”

“Half,” he decided, and she hummed in agreement as she spit a pit out into her hand. She’d almost swallowed it the first time on accident, but now set it on the paper towel gracing her coffee table. He’d evidently decided that despite Rey’s complaints that they were not only a waste of money, but bad for the environment and wholly unnecessary didn’t hold up against his argument that she needed to have had at least one proper grocery run in her life. She was unfortunately beginning to see the appeal.

“I’m going to see you try 1,000 fruits, and I swear we’re going to find one you don’t like.”

She smiled, but it didn’t cover the sad look she felt form on her face when she thought about what he was saying. She had enjoyed everything they’d been eating. He’d said that he wasn’t a very good cook, but he managed to do much better than she had despite not having attempted it in the last fourteen or so years. He’d evidently been taught, unlike her. She’d never found a food she wouldn’t eat because she remembered what it was like not to.

“Wanting that,” she said quietly, “Taking care of me…is it because of the curse?”

She’d found that speaking her mind around him was getting easier. They’d been slowly able to work out what was compulsion and what was genuine interest and it was making it easier to sort out thoughts and feelings. Now that a full week had passed, Rey’s logical side, the part that analyzed and looked for patterns and answers was back.

He gave her a sad look, and it hurt her because she truly didn’t like making him sad. He was nice to her, genuinely kind, and it didn’t seem like an act or a ploy, but she also wasn’t quite ready to call what they had between them love, let alone a relationship. She was on his lap, he was holding her, but she still wasn’t sure that it was because it was what he wanted, even though she was certain that it was what she wanted.

“No. I don’t think it is. I think I just really do want to watch you try new things. It’s… it feels good.”

There were things of his scattered around her apartment already, though scattered wasn’t the right word because they were put away. He was neat and organized. When he got frustrated, he sometimes would make a mess of things, but he never let her clean them up. He said it was cathartic to have things put away, and she knew a coping mechanism when she saw one. She had plenty of her own.

He had a cell phone plugged in next to hers on the kitchen counter, and she was pleased that he was the first person she’d ever met with an older phone than hers. His clothes were neatly folded, looking more or less brand new and monochrome in a laundry basket pushed against the wall. She was going to empty out a dresser drawer for him and maybe some closet space, but it felt too personal to invite him to keep his things in her bedroom just yet, especially when that implied that he’d also be invited to sleep in there as well.

At least in her head that’s what the implication was. She wished she could figure out how to ask Rose what she thought about it, but she was fairly certain that her friends, including Poe, who had finally stopped hitting on her enough for her to actually hold a conversation with him, thought he already was sharing her bed.

Regardless, Kylo had a razor and a toothbrush on her sink, and products in her shower. He’d forced her into using his conditioner when he’d heard her say she’d never bothered to use it before. She’d had half a mind to say that someone who had spent fourteen years in a lake had no right to make decisions on what was and wasn’t proper hygiene, but he was rather serious about his hair, and she had to admit she was seeing results already in light of his demands. She’d forgotten that hair could feel so soft.

He had a laptop on the way too that would plug in next to hers soon, and while she’d been mildly annoyed that he’d been able to afford something much nicer than hers, plus groceries, plus a wardrobe, she also liked that he was taking up space in her world. Taking up space meant that he was staying. No one, save for Finn, and now maybe Rose, had ever stayed before.

“Are you sure?” she finally asked, because although the question was about fruit, it was truthfully about much more. It was an easy way to ask a harder question without having to say it. ‘Do you really like feeding me fruit or is it weird fucked up fate curse magic making you do it’ was much easier than ‘Are you only staying because you’re stuck?’

He smiled, took another cherry from the bag, and popped it into his own mouth. “More sure than I’ve been about anything in a very long time.”

* * *

He meant what he said, and he’d meant it even more knowing that it was a loaded question. He’d felt the need to touch her face and had seen it replaced by an interest in her that felt more intimate. He wanted to get to know her better. He still wasn’t sure if he’d ever be okay with the fact that he couldn’t return to the lake, but he thought that maybe if he could just be in the water with her, and then come back home to his shoes next to hers by the door and watching her eat and hearing her sing in the shower, he might count it as a fair trade. He’d never wanted anyone else in his life, but now, having Rey, it made him feel strong.

Maybe even strong enough to face his inner demons.

She was way ahead of him, he realized, because he saw in her face how quickly she’d made the decision to finally say something.

“After my first year in foster care, my caseworker stopped checking in on me. I spent an entire year in a house where I was only fed for the amount of work I could do. I was six, so you can imagine… and sometimes even though I did everything I was supposed to… When they found me I was a little less than twelve kilos, I don’t know if you know how much that is, but it’s what a two year old is supposed to weigh and I was six. I’d been tall for my age before. I spent a while in the hospital, I was supposed to go to court, but I don’t think I ever did. I got a new caseworker, they placed me again, and it was okay for a little while until I got moved again and the caseworker stopped coming around again and…”

She sounded choked up and his mouth went dry. Her head fell, a little too forcefully into his chest as she hid her face from him. It would have knocked the wind out of him if he’d been breathing to begin with.

“Sometimes it wasn’t so bad. It was like one of those productivity triangles, ‘enough food to eat’, ‘an actual education’ and ‘not being hit or preyed upon’ but you can only pick two. All of the homes had chores, but chores aren’t so bad as long as no one’s locking you in the bath forcing you to clean it and then feeding you a quarter portion off the tile. I got really good at cleaning floors in that house, as you can imagine.”

He could feel the wetness seeping into his shirt front, and he couldn’t move, pinned there by the revelation that what he’d imagined she might have gone through was nothing even close to the actual horror of it all. He’d had it bad, differently of course, but somehow it didn’t even seem to rate against hers.

“I worked… I worked so hard and I knew that if I could just pass the college exams I could get out. I’d been studying since age eight just so that maybe in ten years I could get out, and I did, and it’s okay now, and I…”

He wrapped his arms around her, tight. He held her because there was nothing he could say to help.

“Every time I needed someone,” she said into his chest, “they didn’t come back. I know I can’t expect you to ever say this was your first choice, but I don’t think I can handle you staying unless it’s because you want to. I can’t… I spent too many years hoping that someone would stay, and I screen people constantly to make sure they’re not going to leave, and I couldn’t with you and… fuck… Kylo I’m scared.”

“Ben,” he whispered, unable to believe that he was getting into it right now, but also knowing that she needed to hear it. “Rey, my name is Ben.”

* * *

She hadn’t cried in seventeen years. Not really, anyway.

She pushed off his chest, tears still rolling down her cheeks. She wasn’t sure what he meant by saying that to her, except maybe that he’d been lying to her for a week, but no, his expression was too soft for that. She’d never seen him look so soft, so vulnerable. He looked sad, scared, and like he’d made his mind up, but blessedly he didn’t look guilty or pitying. To her that made him worthy of hearing out.

He was running his hands over her back slowly, soothingly like he did with her hair. It had only been a week, but he already had cornered the market on “touches that comforted Rey”. It wasn’t a large market to begin with, and no true competitor other than Finn who decidedly was more like variety than competition. Rose too couldn’t compete with what Kylo was doing, though she liked her warm and friendly hugs just the same. Kylo though, or maybe Ben, she thought, he was bringing her back from a very dark place slowly and gently.

“My birthname was Ben Solo,” he started, his voice low and soft. It was the kind of voice she imagined a parent might use to tell a bedtime story to a fussy child, but it sounded infinitely sadder. She focused on it, on the way his lips moved as he spoke but were otherwise downturned. His dark eyes were teary already, and she wasn’t sure if they were for her or him.

“My father… well he was one of those who believed in the soulmate idea so strongly that he just left his skin on the rocks. He wanted someone to find it. He wanted a partner in crime, and when my mom slid on a denim jacket she found while she was taking a walk, he’d found her. He hadn’t expected her to be so opinionated though. Apparently despite the compulsion they warred their whole first week together, and well… every day after that for the rest of their lives together. Mom was a politician, a senator, and she was constantly in the public eye. My father being what he was, and who he was wasn’t great for her, but she loved him anyway. He loved her too, in his own way, but he also loved causing trouble, and he loved the water… not the lake really, but wide open water.”

“Every now and then he’d find his skin because Mom was exhausted or angry and didn’t hide it well enough and he’d head straight for New York harbor. There were a lot of selkies there at the time, probably still are now… but he’d go out to the harbor and go out into the Atlantic. He’d be gone for a week or more and eventually he’d come ashore and his skin would be on the kitchen table when mom got home from work and things would be okay for a while and then they’d start fighting again.”

“I think they had too many problems of their own between their relationship and Mom’s job and the fact that Dad was smuggling something or another and maybe doing worse, because they really didn’t have the time to raise me. I’d see them sometimes, but mostly I had nannies. It probably sounds stupid to you, but I did a lot of dumb shit when I was young to get them to pay attention.”

She shook her head. Her tears were still falling because it hurt her to remember what happened to her, to replay it in her head and tell him why he’d ended up with the worst possible soulmate if that was even what she was. She did know though, that what he was saying wasn’t stupid. Everyone had different trauma, she knew that. Not every issue came out of being literally abandoned or literally starved; sometimes there was more nuance to it, and she didn’t believe in comparing trauma blow for blow like it was a contest. She just understood that for him, this was airing of dirty laundry just as much as it was for her.

“I got in with some really bad people when I was seventeen. My father did some bad shit, but it was mostly for a good reason. ‘His heart was always in the right place’ my mom said, because he’d smuggle prescription drugs over the Canadian border in that shit car of his to sell to people who needed them but couldn’t afford them here and couldn’t go there themselves.”

He almost seemed to be injecting some fondness into his voice, and Rey wondered if maybe, an adult now, Kylo… Ben, had changed his outlook on his father. She thought that they sounded a bit like kindred spirits. He had that goodness in him too, she saw it.

“Anyway. They were just… objectively awful, and a lot older than me, and one in particular took me under his wing.” 

She watched him cringe through his own retelling. His face was beet red, and she could see that tears were rolling down his cheeks, just like they had hers. She didn’t know what she could do but listen to him as he went on.

“He made me think that he saw potential in me, and I’d never heard that before. My mom’s brother had just tried to convince my parents to cart me off to military school or something, so I was angry and I just left… I left and I got into the car with a homicidal maniac who hated my family and wanted to hurt them because my mom had put some of his friends away for human trafficking with a bill she’d written and my dad had been the tip to the cops, and we were halfway to the border ourselves to do God only knows what, when my dad flew into the rest stop we were at in that shit car of his and begged me to come home with him.”

She noticed the shift. His voice was losing a lot of its cool, and he’d switch to calling his father “dad”. She realized, without needing the rest of the story, that his dad didn’t make it out in the end to have more adventures.

“And despite the fact that I was bigger than he was, he somehow managed to get me into the car. We were heading down the highway back home when the car I’d been in… the one with that bastard in it, ran us off the road and into a guard rail. He flipped his car, and he didn’t make it out of the wreckage, but neither did my dad.”

Rey let out a breath she’d been holding, but hardly took another one in. It was too soon to know this about him. It was too soon for him to know that she’d been starved and beaten as a child, but there they were. She reached an unsteady hand out and pressed her palm over his tear covered cheek, her fingers brushing over the scar she’d felt before knowing how he got it.

It felt different to touch it now, knowing that it was a reminder, a mark forever, of the worst day of his life.

She leaned forward and kissed it, closing her eyes to keep her own tears at bay.

* * *

Sobs wracked his body. He didn’t deserve her. He didn’t deserve to be so lucky to have been bonded to her, to be trusted with her trauma, to be accepted for his.

He wrapped his arms back around her and cried as she did the same, her face pressed into his shoulder.


	8. Chapter 8

“Ben?”

A muffled hum filled her ear and Rey almost shut her eyes again. It had been three weeks since they’d met, and yet she felt like she’d known him much longer. She hadn’t wanted to move fast. In fact she’d wanted the opposite, but he was hers. It didn’t feel as fast as it had been.

She’d cleaned out a drawer for him. Not that it had really been difficult, she didn’t have a massive wardrobe or anything like that, but she’d cleaned out a drawer for him and he moved into her bedroom completely. His presence there was, as it was anywhere, unobtrusive but loud. His black slacks hung in her small closet next to her cream colored dress, there was always a lingering smell of his conditioner on the pillowcases, and his watch ticked quietly from the nightstand.

He was warm and large at her back. He’d stopped bothering to wear a shirt to bed within the week of being invited in. She suspected he knew how much she liked to look at him and knew it was only because she knew how much he liked to look at her.

They didn’t dress in front of each other. Nudity was kept to a minimum, and mainly if one of them accidentally forgot to lock both bathroom doors and the other walked in. They still hadn’t mastered that particular skill, but it was mostly alright. She’d learned to avert her eyes, and he’d completely turned on his heel, eyes covered by his palm and a fiery flush across his cheeks and very charmingly on the tips of his ears the time or two he’d managed to return the favor.

They hadn’t had sex. She wasn’t necessarily against it. She was on the pill, and she liked him, but for all the speed of everything else, she wanted to wait. She wanted to feel it in the moment that it was what she wanted.

They’d only kissed for the first time, well and truly kissed on the lips, the night before. She brushed her fingertips along her lips. They weren’t bitten and kiss swollen like they had been the night before, but she thought she still felt a tingle of it there. They’d had several subsequent kisses after the first, catching up for the month they’d gone without since she found his second skin she suspected.

“Ben, we have to get up. I graduate in an hour.”

He groaned again, and despite the fact that he almost always rose before she did, he seemed uninterested in releasing her from his hold.

“You want me to make breakfast?” he asked his voice heavy with sleep.

“No thank you,” she replied, managing to roll out from his hold enough to extricate herself from the bed. “We’re going to eat at least half of my tuition in cookies at the refreshment table afterward or going at all won’t be worth it. Bring your appetite.”

He made a disbelieving sound in response and she grinned.

“Okay, well at least half my lab fees worth, that seems more realistic.”

“I bought you starfruit,” he said disapprovingly, “You’re not going to fill up on just cookies.”

“Oh, is that my graduation gift?” she teased as she grabbed her dress out of the closet and headed for the bathroom door. Her cap and gown were hanging from the shower bar; they had been left there for a few days to unwrinkle themselves with the help of the steam.

He made a dismissive noise, “I’m not telling you what it is Rey. You’ll open it when we get back.”

She grinned at herself in the bathroom mirror. She’d at least deduced that it wasn’t star fruit. Truth be told, she’d never been given a real gift before. Maybe her parents had given her one, but she sincerely doubted it, and foster parents were never so kind. Sometimes the local charitable groups brought Christmas gifts to the orphanages and sent them to the foster parents to give the children, but she’d never received one. She’d been given the beat up copy of Irish Folktales that had sparked her initial research, but it hadn’t really been a gift so much as it had been something given to her out of pity and a sense of duty that some teachers had, to ensure every child was reading outside of school. Finn had wanted to give her a birthday gift once, Christmas having too many negative associations for them both to really try, but she had turned him down because neither of them could afford to buy gifts. It wasn’t her fault that she was so excited at the prospect of being given something.

Ben understood though, or at least she thought he did, because when he’d left a little wrapped box on the coffee table she’d asked a flurry of questions that he’d dismissed with a smile. She liked it when he smiled.

She slid off her pajamas and zipped herself into the dress without much fuss. It was simple, something she’d found at the thrift store and justified buying at the time by telling herself it was a good formal, all occasions, and maybe even interview dress. Now, she thought that she looked quite nice in it, not that it mattered really, because next she zipped on the black gown that went over the top, what everyone would see, and brushed out her hair before pinning her cap on securely. It was the second time she’d done this in as many years, and the only difference today was that she was getting hooded as well as getting her diploma. She was thrilled that Dr. Holdo would be the one presenting her hood, especially after the blood, sweat, and tears they’d put in together on her thesis in her last week of classes. It was off to an academic journal, hopefully to be published, though she was anticipating going through a couple rounds of revisions at least.

Dr. Holdo, who was now demanding Rey call her Amilyn, told Rey that any reviewer who had anything but high praise for her article was first and foremost a dumbass, and secondly, asking for her boot up their ass. She’d also mentioned that they would be her off-duty boots, the ones with the spike heels. Despite having a mostly professional relationship with the woman, Rey was grateful to have her in her corner.

She looked at herself in the mirror, hearing Ben on the other side of the door finally getting out of bed to dress and put himself together. She didn’t have anything else to do really. Her shoes were by the front door. She didn’t own any jewelry, she didn’t wear makeup, and there was nothing more she could do with her hair.

She left the bathroom so that Ben could do what he needed to, which frankly was always more than what she did, and walked back into the bedroom. She didn’t have anything else to wear, but she wanted her undergraduate tassel. She just wanted to keep it in her pocket, but Rose had had an idea that they should all take a photo in front of the science building together in their regalia where they held up their undergrad tassels as if to say they’d won round one and two in case anyone lost track.

She pulled everything out of the top of her trunk and laid it on the bed, reaching the tassel in the very bottom and sticking the silver thing in her pocket. It matched Finn’s. Rose’s was golden, and Poe had mentioned once that his was bright orange. The one on the cap she was wearing now was green, and with that all four of them would match.

She smiled at the thought. 

“Rey, I’m cutting this starfruit anyway,” Ben called from the kitchen. He’d dressed and done his hair in record time evidently.

She quickly scooped up what she could off the bed and dropped it back in the trunk. She’d take care of the rest later. She’d decided that she could short herself a cookie or two if it meant seeing what starfruit was all about.

* * *

Ben grinned as the smattering of graduate students approached the front of the arena. He was taking photos on Rey’s phone, because his had the worse camera. It was fourteen years old, and he was lucky that it had a camera on it at all, but he hadn’t been moved to buy a new one. Rey didn’t ever push him to buy anything at all, and he had a feeling that she never would, despite his frequent insistence that she could, in fact, tell him if she wanted anything. He was still struggling to get her to pick out something at the grocery store that she wanted to try, like it was too much of a burden on him to get her a package of Skittles because she’d never had them before.

He liked treating her, when she let him. Treating himself, however, wasn’t really a priority. His phone wasn’t even something he needed. It had a grand total of two numbers in it that weren’t the broker he’d invested through. He suspected it might have four if he ever let Rose and Finn get ahold of it. They liked him, and he’d learned that it was for more than just his trivia abilities, though he couldn’t imagine what else they saw in him. He still wasn’t sure what Rey saw in him, but he knew that it was something good whenever she looked at him. He could see it in her eyes when they were together that she cared for him more than he ever deserved to be cared for by anyone.

His phone was, at Rey’s behest, charged and in his pocket. Her phone, however, was the one on which he was snapping photos of Rey walking single file with the other graduates down the aisle. She was beautiful. She always was, but she lit up in the middle of the crowd. Poe was in front of her, Finn and Rose were directly behind her and they all looked happy. He was happy for them. Despite only joining the group a month ago, he knew that they had worked hard to get where they were. He thought, maybe, he might like to do that someday, but for now he was focused on Rey unsteadily, but confidently, walking along on her heels.

He took another photo as Rey was called up to the podium and another when a cotton candy haired older woman placed a black and gold hood around her neck before handing her an evidently empty degree holder.

“We get the actual thing mailed to us after they double check that we’ve crossed out t’s, dotted our i’s and paid all our fees, which really is the main reason for making us wait,” Rey had explained to him a few days before. She’d seemed annoyed about the whole matter and he frankly hadn’t been able to blame her. It seemed like a shit policy.

He clapped when she walked away and sat back down and took more pictures of her friends as the commencement went on, mostly because while she hadn’t asked him to, he had a feeling that she would like them. Rey never asked him for much, and he wanted to show her that it was okay to want things, especially from him. She had said that there was nothing that he could take from her, and so he was intent on giving her all he could instead. He’d done a lot of wrong in his life, and nothing he could ever do would change that, but he wanted to do right by her.

* * *

Rey blushed when Ben kissed her. They’d kissed before, and the soft press of his lips to her cheek was rather tame compared to how they’d kissed the night before, but it was the first time he’d kissed her even chastely in front of her friends. Finn was whistling. She thought about shooting him a look to tell him exactly what she thought about his humor, but Rose was already giving him one of her trademark elbow jabs to the ribs for her sake.

“Congratulations,” Ben said. He was looking at her like she hung the stars, and she was on such a high that she almost felt like maybe she had. She couldn’t stop grinning. She had her master’s degree, she’d been awarded it next to her best friends, and she had Ben, her maybe-probably-boyfriend, and it was more than she’d ever imagined having in her entire life.

Her stomach was grumbling, evidently deciding that she could strive to make the day just a little better with some of the cookies and fruit from the nearby reception table. The starfruit Ben had bought her was odd, not quite delicious, but refreshing, and while it hadn’t been able to make the first entry on her nonexistent list of foods she’d decided to dislike, it hadn’t been particularly filling either.

“Thank you for taking pictures for me,” Rey said, gripping her phone in her hand. It didn’t have the best camera, but in his hands it had done well enough to capture not only her graduating, but also all her friends. He’d been thoughtful. She didn’t really have many pictures of her friends. She never really thought to take them herself and while Rose did take them, Rey had never asked her for them. She thought that she might want to ask now. She thought she might like to print them and the ones that Ben took.

She’d never really had anything tangible to attach her memories to. Before meeting Finn she’d never even had any memories she wanted to keep, and now with Ben she’d decided that she wanted to remember everything.

“You can ask me to do things for you,” he reminded in a low voice that drowned out the noise of the chatting crowd around them. “I like doing things for you, you don’t have to thank me for doing things that normal… that I should do for you.”

She smiled, they’d been dancing around the word, or any word really. Finn and Rose had long since been calling them a couple, but she and Ben had yet to put a label on what they were. They hadn’t said the “L” word yet either. She didn’t want to rush. It had only been a month, and yet she also wanted to say it. She had never felt the way she felt about him and giving it a name, saying what he meant to her was logical but also scary.

“I’ll try,” she said, and she meant it because he’d meant it when he’d said it too.

“Okay,” he said, leaning down steal a quick kiss, “You go with your friends, I’m going to head back to the apartment and make lunch.”

Rey smiled in response, until he added, “So don’t eat all the cookies, alright?”

She stuck her tongue out and gave his arm a quick squeeze. She let herself watch him walk away and thought, for a moment, that she really liked him in dress pants.

“No promises,” she called after him, and walked over to the trio who happened to be next to the table talking to Rose’s older sister and Poe’s entourage which included his parents, a rather frail looking abuelita, and no less than five tios, tias, and several primos and primas of varying ages. Poe hadn’t been kidding when he’d called his family big.

* * *

Ben sighed in relief when he made it back to the apartment. He still wasn’t used to being around so many people at once. Being with Rey was about the right amount of human interaction for him, though he didn’t mind spending time with her friends either. The reception area outside the campus arena where commencement had been held, had however, been far too crowded for him.

He used his key to open the door. Rey had only recently given it to him, and while he knew that she really had nothing to fear from him, and therefore no reason not to trust him with a key, he knew it was a big step for Rey. She had a hard time letting people in, and for good reason, and yet in the span of just a month she’d not only let him into her life, but into her home and into her bedroom.

It was there that he went first. He needed to change. He looked nice enough, he thought, but he didn’t really feel like wearing the button-down shirt and the black dress slacks for the rest of the day, especially not while he was cooking. When he entered the room, he smiled. Rey wasn’t a dirty person. She liked things mopped and wiped down and generally clean, but she was abysmal at keeping things neat. She’d somehow managed to leave a pile of clothes and papers on her, their, unmade bed before they’d left.

He liked neatening things up. It had been a coping mechanism he’d picked up as a kid. He was frequently knocking things over in outbursts, something he still did, but tried his best not to. Learning to clean it up, to fix things he broke, was something that brought him a fair measure of peace. Neatening up after hurricane Rey was also something he enjoyed, but mostly because it felt so domestic.

He reached out to start rearranging the mess so that he could make the bed, and immediately realized his mistake.

He felt something soft under his hands, and with it came a jolt to his very core.

He was free, but not really. If he was really free he’d be able to put the mottled grey thing in his hand back on the bed, or leave Rey a note, or even call her on the ancient phone in his pocket, but he couldn’t. His feet were on autopilot out her front door before he could even think to do something, anything to tell her what had happened was an accident.

His feet were leading him straight to the lake, and he hoped beyond all hopes that he’d run into Rey on the way there. He wasn’t even sure if he’d be able to tell her what was going on if he did see her though, because try as he might when he pulled his phone out of his pocket, he couldn’t dial her number.

Instead he dialed the other number, the one that had been saved in there for fourteen years. It picked up on the third ring, just as he saw the water in sight.

“Mom,” he said, hearing his own voice break pitifully, “Mom I fucked up. You have to… no listen Mom please!” He was all but hyperventilating, “Mom, her name is Rey, she lives in town. You have to tell her I didn’t want this. Tell her I’ll be back as soon as I can, Mom please.”

He was already in the woods, slipping off his shoes, stripping down but not able to control his own hands as he did it. The phone, and all his clothes, went into the box. He didn’t bother locking it because he couldn’t, because he was slipping on his second skin, and all but pitching himself over a cliff to get into the water.

* * *

When Rey got back to the apartment, she had a glow about her that she’d never really had before. Everything was perfect in her life for once. Finn and Rose and Poe were all off at family celebration meals, and she was about to eat lunch with the man who had become something like family to her.

It had been sweet of Ben to come back to make lunch, she thought as she kicked off her heels with glee. She was carrying her cap in the same hand as her diploma-less holder, and she tossed her gown easily onto the coat hook by the door.

“Ben, I’m back!” she called gleefully. She was thinking about finally giving in and letting him take her out to eat somewhere for dinner because she felt she was worth it.

When there was no response she called again, “Ben?”

He wasn’t in the kitchen and the bathroom door was as wide open as they left it. That only left the bedroom, and she supposed that maybe he’d fallen asleep. She had forced him awake early and it had been a lot to deal with between the excitement and the crowds. She wouldn’t be against a nap herself.

She smiled and pushed open the bedroom door, only to recall the mess she’d left on the bed that she found Ben-less, and only slightly disturbed.

The realization punched her in the gut, and she all but ran over to the bed to scavenge through the things she’d left there, scattering them about on the floor as she went to check her trunk too for what she already knew was gone. Her heart was skipping beats left and right.

“No, no, no, no, no!” she said on repeat. There had to be another explanation. There was no reason he’d want to go. Even if he’d just found it by accident, she figured that he would just walk to the water, dive in, and then come back. Why wouldn’t he?

She walked back into the living room and fell onto the couch where an unopened gift sat on her coffee table. She stared at the door. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry!  
For those who don't know what the master's hood is, it's a part of regalia you're awarded when you get your masters, almost all the sciences have gold lined hoods. [Here's an image](https://www.graduationworld.com/media/wysiwyg/chart/chart-hood.jpg) that gives you a sense of how they work. My hood, come Spring 2020, is going be be Lemon Yellow, Royal Blue and White on a black base.  
Fun facts! Gotta love 'em!


	9. Chapter 9

Rey stared out at the lake. She wondered if he was out there somewhere. She was furious at him for not coming back yet. She’d come out every single evening, and he knew where she lived. He’d told her the story of his parents, he could come back and bring her his skin and leave it on their coffee table if he wanted to, and she’d let herself believe that he did, in fact, really want to.

She wondered, not for the first time since she returned home to find it empty with his skin gone from her trunk, if the legends were true about maidens crying seven tears into the sea to summon a selkie. He was the only one in the lake, she’d said as much, so she thought that maybe if she cried for him, he’d come back home.

It was crazy and melodramatic, and she’d never had the chance to ask him if it was true or not anyway. She wouldn’t try it, not when she was angry and confused and wondering why he hadn’t just come home already.

“Rey, I presume?”

“Yes?” she replied, and then she took sight of who was asking.

“Oh, he didn’t tell me you were British!”

She recognized the woman before her for two very different reasons. The first was that when she’d been studying for her citizenship test, she’d taken particular interest in New York’s political history. Anything worth doing for Rey was worth doing well and because she had been moving to the state at the time, she’d given it additional care. The recently retired Senator Leia Organa, a reform pusher who had, just before her retirement, sponsored a bill on water quality and conservation, had been of particular interest to Rey.

The second was that she was, undoubtedly, Ben’s mother. She couldn’t explain how she knew for certain. They didn’t look quite the same, and she could already tell their personalities differed a bit, but she knew that the woman before her was his mom.

“I’m sorry Senator Organa, I didn’t hear you coming…”

“Senator?” the older woman said with a laugh, “Oh hell don’t give me that, call me Leia. I’d say call me Mom but that’s assuming way too much on my son’s end isn’t it?”

It certainly was assuming too much, but she just smiled. She didn’t know how Leia had known where to find her, but it sounded almost like she’d talked to Ben, and that was something that caught Rey’s attention particularly quickly.

“I’m sorry, you’ve spoken to him?”

Leia sighed and finished crossing the space between them, taking Rey’s hand in hers gently.

“Yes, a few days ago. When I gave him my old blackberry I thought that he would toss it in the trash, not keep it on a plan for fourteen years. I’m surprised it even worked on the new towers and I almost rejected the call because I hadn’t bothered to transfer the number to the last three phones I’ve had. But I had it memorized anyway and when I picked up… you really should have heard him, just went straight for it. All ‘Mom I fucked up’, ‘find her and let her know for me’, what have you. So I booked a train up, but it got cancelled so I drove up and it took me the longest time, so I really should have been here already, but look at me, telling you more than you need to know.”

Rey blinked at the woman, still not quite believing her eyes that she was in fact there.

“Honestly I wished he would have just had the good sense to tell me your phone number. Just because the compulsion wouldn’t let him call you didn’t mean I couldn’t, really. Not that I didn’t want to meet you, I’m thrilled really, but it was the first time he called in fourteen years and he sends me all the way from the city to upstate.”

“I’m sorry,” Rey said, interrupting before Leia could go on, “He called you to come find me?”

Leia seemed to be shocked for a moment, as if she really didn’t realize she’d missed something important. She gave Rey’s hand, which she was still holding, a light squeeze.

“He’ll be back in a week, dear. It’s part of the curse, when you find his skin it starts a week where you can hardly stay away from each other. Han and I used to call it our honeymoon period. I think Ben hated it more than when we fought, though you two seemed to get through it pretty well the first time from what I can tell. When he finds his skin it starts a week where he can’t leave the water. It’s pretty awful when you don’t mean for it to happen, especially the first time because there’s the waiting and the not knowing. He’d meant to save you that, but then I got caught up with the travel issues and everything.”

“He’s coming back?” Rey asked. She didn’t mean to sound as surprised as she was, but Leia just gave her a sad smile and nodded.

“You’re just lucky he didn’t decide to go to the harbor like his dad used to. It used to add a lot of travel time.” She gestured at herself, and added, “Clearly. But, yes, and he wasn’t looking forward to going in the first place as much as I could tell.”

* * *

Ben’s mother, Leia, was in Rey’s living room. She was drinking coffee and complimenting Rey’s cacti pleasantly. The jacket she wore hadn’t slipped Rey’s notice, well worn denim. Ben had said something about his father’s second skin looking like a denim jacket after his mother touched it, but she supposed that it might not be, after all, Ben’s father was dead and it was completely possible that Leia just really liked denim. Rey had found too that she liked the idea of wearing a leather jacket much more now than she ever had before, but she knew that they were just proxies for what she really wanted. Even the most well worn jacket didn’t fit her as well, didn’t feel half as comfortable as Ben’s skin had felt on her shoulders.

She wanted to ask Leia. She wanted to ask her so many things, but she also didn’t want to be rude. For the first time in a very long time she wished she’d been taught something like manners, if only because then she might have some idea of what she should be doing. She’d offered the older woman some coffee, invited her into her home, and she wasn’t sure what was done after that. She imagined however that manners didn’t really have an answer for her particular situation, but she also thought that maybe they couldn’t hurt.

“I never thought that Ben would find someone,” Leia said pleasantly. Rey saw her smiling wistfully and rubbing her thumb against the edge of her denim jacket like she was running her thumb over the hand of someone who wasn’t there. “He never really forgave himself after his father, you know. He spent a year in his room, not really talking or doing much after that and when his skin came to him… well he just left without saying anything. I really thought that I’d never hear from him again.”

Rey frowned, “You really haven’t heard from him in fourteen years?” She’d thought maybe it had been an exaggeration, like when she told someone she could her weight in just about anything. Realistically it was closer to half her weight and probably just in carbs.

“I thought about him every single day, but the first time he’s reached out was when he called me to come here. He only really told me your name and what you looked like and where he thought you might be, but that was a lot for him. I wasn’t the mother he deserved, and Han and I hurt him in a lot of ways we didn’t even realize were possible until the damage was already done. That he called me at all is still surprising to me. He must really love you.”

He did. She knew that deep down somewhere. She also knew that she loved him, too. If she didn’t love him and he didn’t love her, it wouldn’t have hurt her so badly to see him go.

“We hadn’t said it yet,” she admitted sadly. She wished she had said it that morning, when he’d looked at her so meaningfully in her dress and cap and gown. She wished she would have said it casually when he went back to her apartment. She wished that she had said it and she was still wishing, just as she had been since she realized he was gone, that she hadn’t been in such a rush to get to graduation and that she’d been more careful about putting her things back into the trunk.

Leia smiled softly and crossed the room, setting her coffee cup down next to Rey’s. She pulled her into a gentle hug, and Rey imagined it was the kind of hug that she’d given Ben when he was young and sad or scared. It was what Rey thought maternal love felt like. She’d never felt it before. She wondered if when Ben came back, he’d start to patch things up with Leia. Rey would like that if it was something he was open to. She liked Leia a lot, and she wouldn’t be opposed to having her in their corner. She only had a handful of people in her life, and anyone who crossed the state at the drop of a hat to help someone she loved even after fourteen years without them was someone that Rey would gladly add to her shortlist.

“He’ll tell you,” she said as Rey hugged her back, “In his own time and in his own way. He was such a quiet little boy, he didn’t say things as much as he’d show you. We never were a good family for talking things out, and he didn’t exactly win out on genetics there. My family has always been a passionate bunch for better or for worse, and usually for the worse. And then Han was, well… Han. Let’s just say that if you notice Ben has a temper, a flare for the dramatic, and a penchant for mischief, he comes by it honestly.”

Rey smiled, “When he told me about Han I didn’t say it, but they don’t seem all that different. He’s a good man.”

Leia laughed and Rey couldn’t help but feel okay for the first time in a few days when they both made their way over to the couch.

“You have no idea how glad I am to hear you say that. But enough about Ben and our family troubles. Tell me about you. You just graduated, right? What do you do?”

And she decided that if both her instincts were telling her to trust Leia, and if she’d been Ben’s first call, she was worthy of her trust. She told her everything.

* * *

Leia had been gone for a few days, and Rey had gone out to bi-weekly mandatory pub trivia night with Rose and Finn the night before. Poe was back home celebrating graduation with his parents, or as he’d put it “taking the free meals where he could get them.” Rose’s older sister Paige had been in town anyway to help fill his seat, but they’d been surprised when she’d shown up without Ben.

She’d simply told them that he was out of town, which was a creative lie that she didn’t quite feel bad about because it wasn’t at its core untrue. She’d also told them about Leia who they had found in the retelling, just as delightful as Rey had upon meeting her.

They’d won the night, again to the bartender’s chagrin, this time by the skin of their teeth, and only because Paige Tico just so happened to have an almost encyclopedic knowledge of Judy Garland films. They’d lost points in the sports section, mostly because Poe was their ringer for football. Rose and Finn had managed well enough without him, but only because they’d heard him talk about it often enough. As a Brit who’d never played it herself, let alone watched anyone else do it, she’d never even bothered to attempt helping and had done much better in the category of world geography.

Rose and Finn had shared with her their intentions to stay in the area. There were plenty of local places in need of an electrical engineer, so Rose was set, and Finn would have to travel no matter where he settled to supervise projects. They liked the area well enough to stay, and Rey had admitted to them that she thought she might stay too. It was something she wanted to talk to Ben about.

She was laying on her couch, thumbing through a copy of  _ Good Omens _ . Finn and Rose were watching the miniseries version on Amazon, but Rey never watched anything that wasn’t on YouTube, and she rarely did that. Finn had given her the book as a graduation gift so that when she was done reading and he was done watching, they could talk about it. Her eyes were mostly grazing over the page. It was getting late, and it had been a week. She was expecting Ben, but she’d been expecting him since she woke up that morning.

She hated waiting. She’d waited for twelve years on people that were never coming back for her. She used to make up stories for herself, that her parents had been forced to give her up because of illness or because they were poor and they wanted better for her, and that when they were in a better place they’d come back for her. They’d never come, and when she’d turned eighteen she’d been able to read her file and see just how silly her hope had been. There had been a picture of her at age five in it, wide eyed and snot nosed with cigarette burns on her arms. There was something about her parents in it too, that they’d been arrested for trying to sell her. They hadn’t given her up for her own good, they’d been caught in a sting. They hadn’t come back for her because they’d never wanted her in the first place.

Ben though, she told herself with confidence, he would come back. He loved her. He hadn’t said it, but he did. She wouldn’t let herself second guess that. She stared at the page without really absorbing much of it. She checked her phone for the fifth time in as many minutes, clicked her ringer up even though it was all the way up.

She thought, not for the first time, that she should have waited for him on the shore. She didn’t know where he’d gone in or if he was going to come out where he had before. She’d told herself that logically speaking it made more sense for her to stay in her apartment. It was one place, not a whole shoreline, and he knew where it was, and it had his toothbrush in it and his shirts in her drawers.

She wondered if maybe he would be disoriented when he came out. Maybe he’d forgotten where she was. She had given him her number. It had been in that ancient blackberry of his, and he could call her if it wasn’t dead. His mother had been so sure that he was coming back for her, but she hadn’t spoken to him in years, and she wondered how she could be sure of anything.

And then there was a knock on the door, the turn of the key in the lock as she scrambled off the couch.

Ben was there, standing in her doorway looking extremely disheveled in the same clothes he’d been wearing the last time she’d seen him. She’d never known him to look disheveled before, not even first thing in the morning when he woke up with his hair mussed. He looked like he’d been through the wringer, and Rey thought that maybe he had been. He was holding something in his arms and the look on his face was a strange mixture of sheepish and terrified, like a child who had just been caught doing a bad thing.

* * *

Ben wondered if his mother had found her, if she’d explained. He needed Rey to understand that he hadn’t wanted to leave, that even though normally he felt free in his second skin, it had felt like a prison. He’d been a seal with a man’s concerns. All he’d been able to think about, the entire time he was away, was that Rey had opened to him about what she’d gone through, and then he’d abandoned her like everyone else.

“I… I have a theory,” he said and it sounded stupid. He’d been thinking a lot while they were apart, and he’d thought about what he was going to tell her the entire walk up, but it had all gone out the window when he saw her. He held out his arms to her, offered her his second skin despite the years he’d sworn to himself that no one would possess it, and with it possess him, for as long as he could manage it.

“I have a theory,” he started again, “That maybe if I give this to you… instead of you finding it, that it might keep us from being the way we were the first time. If I offer it to you, and you take it, maybe I won’t ever find it again, because I’ll know where it is and I won’t have to leave unless you want me to.”

He hoped he was explaining himself well enough. Maybe it would have been better for him to apologize first or check to see that she understood that he hadn’t planned on leaving her in the first place. He should have started by telling her that he loved her, or even that he was falling in love with her, because he was.

She was staring at him. Just staring, and he wasn’t sure if it was a good thing or not, because he had a feeling that if she was really angry with him, he’d know it already. She wasn’t a weak-willed person, and he wouldn’t even hold it against her if she screamed at him or cried or even hit him.

She didn’t do any of that. He watched her walk towards him and reach out to him in return. He didn’t move, just stood there, and waited for her. She’d been waiting for him long enough.

* * *

“So what you’re saying is, if I take it,” Rey said, slowly doing mental math for herself, “there’s a chance that you can’t find it again because it won’t be missing?”

He nodded.

She supposed it made about as much sense as any of it. She could imagine it working, and it was a nice idea. At any rate, he was back now, and what he was saying to her, what he was offering her was more than enough proof to her that he was always going to come back no matter what.

The skin in his arms, that he was offering her so anxiously, was mottled grey and shiny. It looked soft, and it was the first time she’d really seen it for what it was. She knew as soon as she touched it, however, it would go back to being the well worn leather jacket that she’d loved and lost. She crossed the remaining space between them, and instead of taking it immediately from him, she wrapped her arms around him, pressed up on her tiptoes and kissed away the frown on his lips.

He made a soft sound, something like a surprised exhalation and a pleased groan.

She felt him drape his skin over her shoulders and then return the embrace. She all but collapsed into his arms. She was so tired of waiting, but for the first time in her entire life, someone she’d been waiting for had come back, and the realization made her dizzy.

She looked down at herself and saw his skin, her leather jacket, safe and sound on her shoulders. She slipped out of his arms for a moment and touched it. She didn’t feel any different than she had before he’d placed it on her. Maybe she felt a little warmer, a little more comfortable, but she didn’t feel the need to touch him. It wasn’t a honeymoon period, because, she thought, she hadn’t found it. He’d given it to her freely. She still loved him just as much as she had before, she still had a hundred conflicting feelings, but she wasn’t raging against them to have nothing but positivity. She was herself, no forces beyond her control augmenting that. It felt good.

She picked it up and put it on her coat hook, then turned back to him, and said what she’d been wanting to say for a week.

“I love you, Ben. Welcome home.”

He grinned at her and she melted a little. She’d never melted before him, but that wasn’t magic, that was falling in love.

“I love you, Rey. Thank you for waiting.”

She smiled at that, “I don’t mind the waiting so much, because I know you’re coming back.” she said. “Just let me know before you go so I can kiss you goodbye.”

“Of course I was coming back,” he said warmly, “I still have 985 fruits to watch you try.”

He finally smiled back, the last of his doubts leaving his face as he joked. Rey felt light and warm and safe. She’d been waiting for someone to do that for her for a very long time. Ben, it seemed, had been worth waiting for.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We need more fics where Leia saves the day, really.  
Anyway, you all had to know this was coming! Some very slight smuttiness at the start of the next chapter <3


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: Some very slight, non-descriptive smuttiness at the start of this chapter. I'm sure you knew this was coming. The rating surely gave me away!

He pressed her into the mattress and was rewarded with a moan that made his heart skip a beat. She was beautiful, flushed and bare beneath him. Her hands were in his hair, pulling his mouth to hers. He hadn’t expected her to be docile, and he was proven correct when she ground her hips into his and captured his mouth for her own.

He pressed open mouth kisses down her neck and chest and her hands wandered across his back and shoulders. This was all them. There was no compulsion of the curse requiring him to love her, nor was she being driven to accept it by anything but free will. He groaned when her fingers moved from the back of his neck to cup his cheek and run over his scar. She knew how he’d earned it now, and it didn’t stop her.

He felt love; he felt absolution.

“After this,” he whispered, shifting his face from her décolletage to her ear, “I’m going to do this right. We’re going to go on dates Rey, and I’m going to earn your love.”

Not one to stay silent and be told what she was or wasn’t going to be complicit in, Rey took advantage of the situation to grab onto him and force him to roll with her, until she was on top of him.

“You don’t need to earn something that’s freely given,” she replied, pressing a kiss to his mouth for good measure. “Though you can take me to dinner if you want.”

He felt the laughter flow out of him. It still felt unnatural to laugh; it had been so long since he’d felt good enough to laugh about something, but Rey was smiling down at him, and he had already decided he’d take her to dinner every night if it made her happy.

* * *

“I’ve never done this before,” Rey said as she sat astride him. She knew that he knew, but she felt the need to say it anyway. It was what you were supposed to tell a partner, she thought. She had been curious enough about the whole act and what one even did beyond the biological aspects while she was in undergrad that she had done a bit of googling. She’d always been big on research.

“Me neither,” he admitted from under her, and she had to admit that under her seemed like a pretty good place for him to be. She liked looking down at his face, flushed and smiling. She liked the idea of making him that way. “You’re the one with the master’s degree in Biology though.”

She laughed. She couldn’t help it. He wasn’t wrong.

“Are you telling me I’m in charge?”

He grinned and she leaned down to kiss him. She liked this. She liked him being playful with her, with them both being nervous, but not being afraid of being nervous.

“I’m telling you that you can always be in charge,” he replied, “I’m tired of being in charge, unless you want me to be, because I can try if you’d prefer?”

She smiled and went back to kissing him, rolling so that they were side to side. “I think we should both be in charge,” she said decidedly, “at least this time.”

His arm draped over her gently and she all but shivered when his fingers just grazed the skin of her lower back. She liked that and she thought, with great amusement, that maybe they were about to learn a lot of things that they hadn’t known they’d liked before.

She let her own hand run down his chest, slowly but surely, and gave him a cautious touch, which he responded to by pressing into her hand and groaning.

“Tell me what you want me to do?” she asked, looking him in the eye as they lay there, side by side.

“I will if you will,” he replied, and she nodded. They were going to figure it out together.

* * *

She was beautiful, he thought. She always was, but now, in his arms, sweaty with her hair mussed and a pleased smile on her face, she was particularly lovely in a way that made him want to do what they’d done at least once a day for the next week. Maybe even twice a day. He figured they had some time to kill. Rey was still figuring out where she was applying for work, and whether she wanted to go for her doctorate or not and really they could mostly figure that out from bed, couldn’t they?

He was still trying to figure out what he was going to do as well. For a long time his form had been his purpose and his purpose had been his form. He loved Rey, but he couldn’t really have her be the only thing he was living for. She was, and always would be, the most important part of his life, but it would be unfair to her for him to not be doing something as well.

He had wanted to write when he was younger, and while he thought that he could certainly write long winded poems about the way Rey looked now, he thought that maybe he should experience a little more of life and figure out who he wanted Ben Solo to be now that he had a reason to be Ben Solo again.

“I’m going to grab some water,” he said quietly, not wanting to leave for even a moment or disturb her, but his mouth was dry, and he’d decided already that if she decided that she wanted a repeat performance, he would be prepared to give it. He pressed a kiss to her lips before he edged out of bed, but it was hard for him to leave when she kissed him back.

“Grab me a glass?” she requested, and he nodded. She hadn’t been afraid to ask him for what she wanted in bed. He’d liked that a lot, and he appreciated the effort.

It was only when he walked back through their living room with two glasses in hand that he noticed an entirely undisturbed small wrapped box.

“You didn’t open it?” he called into the bedroom. It was a rhetorical question, because clearly, she hadn’t. He rearranged the glasses, holding them together by their mismatched lips in one hand while he picked the box up in the other.

He wasn’t certain why he was surprised that she hadn’t opened it other than that he’d assumed that she might have been mad enough at him to toss it out. He still wasn’t certain that he hadn’t warranted some sort of recompense for leaving, even without wanting to.

He entered the bedroom and handed her the box and a glass.

* * *

Rey sat up to sip her water and looked at the little box he’d deposited on her blanketed lap. She couldn’t quite say that she’d forgotten about it when she’d stared at it sadly for multiple days, but she’d been too distracted since he’d come back to do anything with it. Her first real gift and it still wasn’t opened.

He was looking at her expectantly, if a little nervously, as if after what they’d just done she’d disapprove of any gift he gave her, as if she’d ever disapprove of any gift he ever gave her to begin with. She still could strongly stand by the fact that whatever was in the box, however, was not a starfruit.

“I couldn’t open it without you here,” she explained, “even when your mother came and told me that you were coming back, I didn’t want to open it without you.”

She saw his expression soften a little. It was true. She still wasn’t very good at manners, but even she knew that it was not particularly polite to open a gift when the gifter wasn’t present. If he’d gone through the trouble to get her a gift, he at least deserved to watch her open it.

Happy to oblige, now that he was at her side and waiting patiently, she peeled back the paper to reveal a small box with a jeweler’s name on it. It looked familiar to her, and she thought that maybe it was the place in town across from the bookstore. She didn’t fixate on it, realizing it didn’t really matter, and opened the box.

It was not at all what she’d been expecting, and she hadn’t known what to expect in the first place. In the box before her, on a fine silver chain, was a very small charm, shaped like a seal. She blushed as she looked at it. It was something like an inside joke that she could wear and no one would be wiser of what it symbolized. She loved it.

“I’m glad you waited actually,” he said warmly, picking the silver thing up out of the box carefully and bringing it up to her neck, “because I wanted to be the one to put it on you.”

Rey closed her eyes, when he brought it around her neck. She focused on the feeling of his fingers brushing her neck, the sensation of happiness that came with him marking her in a way. It felt a lot like when he placed his skin on her shoulders. It was a move of trust, of warmth, of comfort. It was another promise to her, and she recognized it for what it was. Whether he was on land or on sea, he was hers.

She rubbed her thumb over the little seal. It fell in the valley of her breasts, not quite where her heart was, but close enough for her to take joy in the symbolism of it.

She kissed him to thank him, a long kiss that they both had to come up for air after. “I love it,” she whispered. “Thank you.”

“I love you,” he answered back. “Thank you for waiting for me, for trusting me even when it seemed impossible that the things I was telling you were true.”

She pulled him down onto the bed and into another kiss that left them both gasping for air by the end.

“I love you, too,” she said, held close in his arms once more. “I love you, Ben Solo.”

She could feel him grinning against the sensitive skin of her neck. His fingers were already fiddling with the little charm, sliding it up and down the chain.

“You were worth waiting for.”

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoyed this deeply self-indulgent fic I've written here. There's a lot I still want to explore in this universe, so I may add some follow ups at a later date (probably fluff and some more explicit bits). We'll see! Thank you so much for reading this, I hope it was as much fun to read for you as it was to write for me!
> 
> Follow me over on tumblr @greyrey-lo if you'd like!


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